A Hunter's Life
by The Exile
Summary: The Profound Darkness may have been defeated but, as Chaz soon discovers, a Hunter's work is never done.
1. Mission 1: The Emperor Rappy

Five years ago, the Profound Darkness had been slain by the hand of Chaz Ashley. What with the ultimate incarnation of evil destroyed and the solar system returning to normal, the Hunters worried that they would go out of business. But there was still work for them. Humans were still capable of just as much evil, and they were constantly being hired to bring to justice murderers, robbers, rapists and people who sneaked out of the window of the inn at night without paying their bill. Children still fell into holes, Sandworms still went berserk during mating season, AI still went out of control despite Demi's attempts to repair the damage that had been done by Dark Force's malicious commands, the impact of the Great Collapse and thousands of years of isolation and disrepair, and, if the rumours were true, a few of the more radical students in Piata Academy were breeding their own biomonsters in the basement again.

And that damn dog was ALWAYS getting lost...

-------------------

Mission 1: The Emperor Rappy

"That one there."

"'Tinkerbell's Dog'? I'm afraid we already have a team on the case..."

Chaz followed the secretary's gaze to the five Hunters who stood in a circle around the bar, trying to coax an alarmingly fat dog away from the snacks. It had already chewed its way through five bags of roasted salted laerma nuts and scoffed the lot. Despite their whistling, yelling and treats offered, the dog wouldn't budge. None of them had cake, and Rocky was only interested in cakes.

"Not that one. That one over there." he pointed to another job on the notice board, "The one with the really, really high price tag."

Chaz needed a lot of money to buy a new sword. The Elsydeon had shattered in the course of protecting him from the massive forces unleashed by the Darkness' destruction, he had sold his Laconian Sword to afford some Star Dews which he had used up during the final battle and the only place that did swords nearly as good quality was the Mahlay family shop, who charged him extra because Hahn's father hated him.

The receptionist reached up and took the job advert off the wall. It was on the top of the board so she had to stand on a chair, giving one of the Hunters a good look up her skirt. This gave the dog a chance to dart past him and out of the front door.

"Ah. It says 'The birds that were terrorising our village and eating our crops have returned. Please exterminate them!'. Its from Mr. Sekreas in Torinco. He's paying thirty thousand meseta plus the three thousand he didn't pay last time. How nice of him. He must have received that letter I sent him explaining what I would do to him if he didn't pay up."

Chaz sighed. So the Rappies were finally back...

--------------------------------------

"I told you so, didn't I?" said Rika for the tenth time today as the Hydrofoil sputtered again, spraying them all with water. They no longer had their own Hydrofoil, having been forced to return all three vehicles to Demi, so they had to hire a Motavian with a dangerously frantic look in his beady red eyes to drive them to Torinco. It was a miracle that the vehicle he claimed to have found in a garbage dump in Tonoe got them across the ocean in one piece at all. The Motavian's driving was so bad that even the monsters were afraid to attack them in case he ran them over. "I told you that the birds would just go somewhere else! They must have been secretly hiding in an even deeper cave, somewhere undisturbed, waiting for their leader to recover from its wounds..."

"Hey, its okay, its King Rappy. We fought it before and won, remember?"

"With four of us, and it was still a difficult fight!"

"But we were much weaker and less experienced then. At our current strength, we could easily AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!"

They weren't even at the island yet, and Chaz could clearly see the size of the enormous bloated mass of yellow feathers waddling up and down the coast line, eating everything in sight. It was somehow cute, in its own monstrous way. Its antennae bobbed up and down and its big round eyes lit up when it caught a Leviathan and ate it.

"I wonder if its the same one or a different one?" mused Rika, "How big do those things grow, anyway? It must be difficult for them to find enough food, what with living on a desert planet and all... do you think they originated from Palma?"

"SHUT UP!" screamed Chaz, drawing his sword, a manic look in his eyes, "Right, we said we would defeat that thing, so we have to keep our promise to our customer and fight it! No surrendering! Its not as big as the Profound Darkness anyway!"

They jumped off the boat - the Motavian was relieved that he was not expected to drive up to the island with the huge bird on it - and ran to the shore and into the fields where the Rappy was eating anything that didn't run fast enough. Claws extended, Rika pounced on it, latching on to its underside. It squawked and turned its head ponderously around to regard her. Then it flapped both its arms and began jumping and down, creating such powerful shockwaves that Chaz was knocked off his feet and Rika was dislodged and flung away. Then it began to warble.

The tall grass erupted. From every direction, Rappies of every size and colour emerged and ran at them, squawking, flapping and pecking. Hundreds of them, they quickly swarmed Chaz. He could no longer see Rika through the wall of beaks and feathers, only hear her screams.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOO! MEGID! MEGID! MEGIIIIIIIIIID!"

----------------------------

"Hey, mister!"

Chaz opened his eyes. His vision was still bleary. Every part of his body was in agony from thousands of cuts and scatches and bites. He could just make out a small boy standing over him.

"Hey, mister, why're you saying funny things and lying around? Did the birdies get ya? Are you gonna die? Can I have your sword if you die?"

Chaz opened his mouth to tell the boy to bugger off. Then the boy's eyes widened.

"Hey, you're that nice Hunter who helped me recover from that illness!" he said, "I can't let you die! I owe you! You saved my life, so I'll save yours!"

"Trimate?" Chaz asked hopefully.

"Even better'n Trimate!" Something was pressed into his hand, "Its the Sword you leant me the other time... the Sword of Alis! It brought me the strength to live on despite my fatal illness, so I'm sure it'll help you recover your will to fight!"

Chaz groaned. A plastic sword. Just what he really needed. He closed his eyes and succumbed to the blackness enveloping him.

"Alis be praised!" said the child, already running away.

Suddenly, there was a familiar sound. It was a kind of a clear, melodic note that rang out in his mind. Then a ghostly image appeared before him - a beautiful woman with long hair and intelligent, courageous eyes. She wore a breastplate over her dress. Her smile was radiant.

"Am I dead?" asked Chaz, "Is this the Elsydeon?"

"No, Chaz, you are not dead. I am speaking to you through the sword you wield. You must not die in this place! Get up, Chaz Ashley!"

"Wait... the plastic sword?"

"It is a poor likeness, but it is still a likeness of my sword. Do you really think it matters which sword it is? I had lots of different swords in my time anyway, they wore out really easily on long campaigns, why would one be any more special than the others? Its the spirit of the wielder that counts... and their willingness to protect Algol from any threat, no matter how great or small. You are still Algol's Protector, Chaz, even now the Darkness has been defeated. Rise again and challenge your foe!"

"Wait... Alis... let me see the image of... Alys... one last time..."

But the apparition had already gone, as had the darkness. It was replaced by a soft, warm white glow that soothed the pain. A Nares technique, he recognised.

"Chaz!" yelled Rika, "I thought you were dead! Why are you holding a plastic sword?"

"Rika... the bird...?"

"I wounded it, so it flew away. I think it went towards Termi."

Termi? That was where the statue of Alis was... and the stupid plastic swords... could it be connected?

"We have to follow that bird right away!"

-------------------------------------------

Leaving the island was more difficult than arriving there. Their Motavian pilot had fled back to the mainland. After a long argument, they persuaded a villager in Torinco that, since the Rappies had all either been killed in the blast of the Megid spell or flown somewhere else, it was safe for them to take a boat out. The boat was much slower than the Hydrofoil but fortunately the obese Rappy was even slower. There were no monsters on the way back because the Rappy ate them all.

Using a pair of binoculars one of the tour guides in Termi gave him, he watched the bird fly over the ocean. It was remarkably fast for something that weighed so much, something that looked as if it shouldn't be able to fly at all - but then, he had experienced first hand how strong that thing was.

"We need to formulate some sort of battle strategy."

"Some sort of what?"

"You know, like, you hit and I'll heal, or..."

"Or you hit and I heal?"

"That's right."

"I hate being the healer."

"Well, I'm a lousy healer."

"Let's both hit then."

"But then who heals?"

"Thinking time over! The enemy's here!" cried Rika, pointing to the large yellow shape now clearly visible in the sky.

Once again, Chaz wondered exactly how that thing flew. He watched as the Rappy perched on the spire of the Ladea Tower. Damn, he thought, now I have to run all the way up there! Fortunately there were no monsters here either because all the monsters in the Ladea Tower were either constructs of dark energy, annihilated instantly when the Profound Darkness was banished from the solar system, or had run away because the Rappy started eating them.

"Rappy!" roared Chaz, sword brandished, "Alis has charged me with the duty of slaying you! I'm going to carry out that duty even if I have to sacrifice my own life in the attempt!"

"Calm down." sighed Rika, drawing her claws, "And don't use that plastic sword in battle!"

The bird squawked, fixed its infeasibly cute eyes on Chaz and beat its powerful wings in an attempt to throw the Hunter off balance again. However, as it did so, he leapt into the air and grabbed hold of the bird's antennae. The antennae thrashed and whirled around in the air but Chaz hung on for dear life. Alis' voice rang clearly in his head once again and he saw that face, serene but powerful. He saw a ghostly blue aura surround the plastic sword and he felt it thrum with energy, alive like the Elsydeon had been. Then he hurled the sword with all his might and it pierced the Rappy's skull and lanced straight through its brain, killing it instantly. The Rappy plummeted off the top of the Ladea Tower. With a sudden panic, Chaz realised that he was falling with it. Rika ran down the steps, hung out of the window of the fifth floor and caught him on the way down.

"No falling off really tall things!" she said sternly.

"You're a one to talk! At least I don't jump out of the door of a spaceship!"

Rika dropped him. It was only five floors down though, so he survived.

---------------------------------------------

"Well done for completing your commission. Here's your pay of fifteen thousand meseta. Please come again to the Hunter's Guild where we enrich the lives of Hunters!"

Chaz sighed. His pay had been docked because the Megid technique he cast in the middle of the field had destroyed the crops.

"This is what happens when you leave problems to fester and escalate!" said Rika.

"Do we HAVE to have a philosophical discussion at the end of every completed job?" sighed Chaz, "You've done it ever since the first time I brought you into the Guildhouse, with the Sandworm ranch incident in Mile. Its getting on my nerves! Why can't I just be a normal Hunter and finish a job and go home and not talk about it?"

"We can never be normal Hunters, Chaz, not after all we've been through."

Chaz thought again about the vision of Alis and the mysteriously empowered sword. No, he thought, I guess I'll never just be a normal Hunter.

--


	2. Mission 2: That Damn Dog Again, Part 1

Mission 2: That Damn Dog ~ Part T1

"Chaz, I want you to understand that this is a special mission. It isn't the same as the contracts we hand out on behalf of clients." the secretary said in a surprisingly serious tone of voice, one he had only heard her use when people didn't pay up. It was starting to scare Chaz, "It is absolutely vital that you don't fail this mission."

"I'm allowed to fail the other missions?" Chaz scratched his head. It was still early morning and most of the Hunters, who were either too lazy to wake up in the morning or too sensible to brave the intense desert heat, were still asleep in their homes, except the ones who didn't seem to have homes, who were in the bar. Chaz didn't feel so alive either. He wished he could afford a coffee. The extra high wage on the special commission he was being offered was looking more and more enticing the longer he tried to stay awake.

"Well... no, but you'll be even more severely punished if you fail this one and dare to come back alive." the secretary told him, "The reputation of the entire Hunter's Guild is on the line."

"Chaz..." she said, pausing for dramatic effect, jabbing her paperwork with her fountain pen like a spear-wielding Zio cultist preparing for war, her eyes dark with steely resolve and badly applied eye shadow, "I want you... to finally... find... that... dern... DOG!"

"I thought a team found it yesterday in Piata." said Chaz, It had followed Tinkerbell's brother, now a grown man, to University, whereupon it broke into a graduation ceremony and ate a diploma. The Hunters apprehended it while it was throwing up all over the statue of Lubetz. Apparently it was allergic to ink.

"It escaped from its cage on the way back to Aeido. We think it chewed through the bars." the secretary said, "This is the tenth successive time its eluded a Hunter attempt to capture it so far this week... and its only Monday! We've had half the Guild on the case with no luck. Something permanent must be done about that dog. You have a reputation as the most reliable Hunter in the Guild, Chaz. You take on the most missions and successfully complete them... more or less... you also saved Algol from the Profound Darkness. Every other Hunter in the Guild has failed, Chaz, you're our last hope."

"If I'm supposed to be the best Hunter, why didn't you ask me first?" asked Chaz, "I am the one who originally found the dog when it first went missing!"

"We thought it would be a little demeaning to ask you to look for missing dogs now you're the saviour of Algol and all," said the secretary, "We severely underestimated that dog! It has made a mockery of the Hunter's Guild!"

"So... where'd you last see the dog?"

"The town guards reported seeing it waddling through the front gates. With those stubby fat legs, it couldn't have gone far."

"They didn't just pick it up?"

"One of them tried. It wriggled out of their grasp, then ate their lunch and walked off." explained the secretary, "You may use any method in your power to capture the dog. The owner has, however, requested it be brought back alive. Tinkerbell misses her little Rocky greatly and would be heartbroken if anything happened to it."

_How old must that girl be by now, _thought Chaz._ Doesn't she have better things to do? Maybe if I use Rever on it later..._

"And no killing it then using Rever on it later on!" warned the secretary, "We are professionals! We do not stoop to such treachery! Although it says nothing about cutting off its legs then using Nares..."

"Its okay, I wouldn't do such a terrible thing. Rika would kill me if I tried and besides, I don't think Nares actually reattaches legs, only arms. Just leave it to me. At least I don't have to travel too far this time..."

* * *

"Hm, you know, Chaz, this stuff actually tastes quite nice." said Rika, "I can see why the dog likes it."

"Rika, stop stuffing your face. We need every last slice as bait for our cunning trap!"

"Aw, the dog won't really eat all of this!" Rika was holding an entire tray laden with freshly baked shortcake. It was still hot from the oven and was exuding a delicious fragrance. Chaz felt like eating some himself, "I only want one more."

"Its only one now but once you're hooked, you'll never be able to stop eating it. How'd you think the dog got that way? Hunters need to watch their weight, you know!"

"Numans don't get fat. We have a perfect metabolism and can digest anything in an instant. Cakes, chocolate, pure sol dew, human flesh..." she gave him a feline look and bared her razor-sharp steel battle claws. Chaz took a step back.

"Okay, okay, you can have one more slice!"

"Thank you again for coming to the Nuara Bakery." said the baker, handing him his change and receipt, "We apologise once again for the..."

"Inconvenient location of your shop." Chaz finished for him, "Do you really need to say that now the entire Hunter's Guild knows where your shop is and buy from it every day? Someone's put a sign up leading to your shop, you know."

"Its our sales gimmick. I'm going to have a word with the town planning council about that sign."

Armed with their shortcake supply, the two Hunters climbed up the stairs of the underground bakery on the outskirts of town, then walked into the wilderness. Aiedo, the largest settlement on Motavia, was built on an oasis. Large enough to survive and rebuild after the natural disasters that wracked Motavia whenever the environmental control systems went haywire or offline, Aiedo wasn't completely surrounded by desert; there were neat rows of crops, patches of scrubland and even a few trees. Chaz followed the paw prints in the sparse soil and the places where plants had been flattened and occasionally experimentally chewed on by the dog. He kept an eye out for monsters as well. Out here in the wilds, a Hunter who wasn't alert ended up dead. The dog had led the last expedition party right into a Sandworm nest.

"Looks like its headed towards Mile." said Chaz.

"Oh yes, it always heads towards settlements after a while, doesn't it?" mused Rika, "I suppose there isn't much food for it out here. I wonder if there's somewhere it goes, some purpose to its wanderings, or if it just likes to be free..."

"Its a dog, Rika. You're philosophising again. What have I told you about..."

Rika laid a hand on his shoulder and shushed him, bringing a steel-reinforced finger to her lips, "Chaz... over there!"

Chaz followed her gaze. There, near the border of the sand flats, was something that looked more like a pot-bellied pig than a dog. It was white with a black splodge on its back, had short legs and a stubby tail and floppy ears. It didn't turn around when Chaz sneaked up to it. It was preoccupied with something edible it had found on the ground. Chaz circled around to approach it from the front, shortcake tray in his outstretched hands, while Rika sneaked up behind it, her animal and biomonster genes making her as stealthy as any predator in the wild.

Suddenly, the ground collapsed beneath them. At first, Chaz thought he had trodden in quicksand or was being attacked by a Sandworm. His sword came out of his scabbard and he righted himself, bending his knees to land as he prepared to strike. Then he remembered that neither Sandworms nor quicksand glowed in bright multicolour fractal patterns.

* * *

"The Edge? How can the Edge be here?"

"Your guess is good as mine." Chaz replied, staring at the swirling, pulsing fractals. In his caffeine-enhanced state, the bright primary colours were even more intense. There was something mesmerising about watching those fractals. They seemed to seep into him, as if the raw power that raged around him couldn't be contained by the threshold of four dimensions and was leaking through the cracks until he, too, was part of the fractal pattern, another pulsing moment in the greater consciousness of Algol... He wrenched his eyes away. _A person could go insane here. _He focussed on his Algo Ring. Rune had told him that the Rings of the Stars were necessary to survive in the Edge. _If we didn't both still wear our Rings of the Stars, we'd both be dead right now. Dead because of that stupid dog._

"I'm guessing it can exist independently of the Profound Darkness." said Rika. The Edge didn't feel evil. The Profound Darkness was evil, the Edge was just a place, somewhere in-between Motavia and wherever the Darkness' prison had been. Maybe it wasn't even a place, just a gap, a hole in reality that was spilling out its component parts. "Maybe it never fully closed when the Darkness was sealed. Maybe the tear was just too big. I don't know, but I hope it being open like this doesn't harm Algol. Look, there's the dog again."

As they reached a T-Junction in the path that the Ring's protective field made for them, Rocky waddled past, not even glancing around it at the

impossible chaos it had fallen into.


	3. Mission 2: That Damn Dog Again, Part 2

"How the hell does it survive in the Edge?" demanded Chaz, "Do the laws of space and time work differently for dogs or something?"

"Shush. We're still on a mission. We have to capture that dog!"

"I dropped the tray! We've no cake left!"

"Don't worry, I stole several slices from the tray so I could eat them when you weren't looking." Rika admitted, reaching into her cloak pockets and pulling them out. Rocky sniffed the air, whined and turned his head to regard the cake, a look of profound longing in his beady, piggy eyes.

"Here, Rocky, its your favourite food!" Chaz coaxed, kneeling down and holding the food out in front of him, "You remember me, right? The nice Hunter who fed you last time!"

The dog cocked his head at an angle and whined. He began to turn around, then looked back at where he had originally been going, as if torn. Then he yelped and sped down the corridor. Chaz and Rika ran after him. Trapping him wasn't really an option in a narrow corridor. However, if this was still the same Edge that they remembered, hadn't changed layout and the Profound Darkness hadn't returned or anything that drastic, the dog would eventually reach a dead end.

Their expectations were confirmed when Rocky ran into the red and yellow corridor, the one that reminded Chaz of autumn leaves and the warm glow of the hearth fire whenever he took too much trimate and stared at the colours for long enough. He heard Rika chanting the words of a Saner technique. It would still take considerable dexterity not to let the animal just run through their legs or wriggle out of their grip. Maybe if he prepared Hinas to go off just at the last second... _Hinas had to work on dogs... right?_

Rocky sniffed the air, whined and walked slowly up to Chaz. The Hunter kept as still and silent as possible. The dog looked up at him, then down at the shortcake. Then it started coughing and wheezing.

"What's wrong with him? Is he ill or something?"

"The effects of overeating must be catching up with him." said Rika.

"This is bad! He has to be returned alive and intact or we'll fail the mission, remember!" said Chaz, "Does Res work on dogs?"

"I wouldn't know, I've never tried to use it on a dog." said Rika. She bent down and reached out a hand to the dog, who sniffed at it and then licked it. Her hand started glowing with the pale blue aura of the Res technique. The dog's hair stood on end as the light started diffusing over it. It yelped, shook itself as if to rid itself of the alien presence and then started coughing again, even more violently.

"Its not working..." complained Rika.

"Try Anti?" suggested Chaz, "Maybe its eaten something poisonous."

Before either of them could use any more techniques on it, the dog coughed something up onto the floor. It was a ring made of a silvery metal, with a mirror-shaped blue jewel. Chaz picked it up.

"I don't believe it..." he began, "That's the Rykros Ring!"

"How did he manage to swallow that? No wonder he was ill!"

"How did he even get hold of it? I thought Hahn had it!"

The dog yelped again, louder this time. It looked visibly in pain and was staring at something the Hunters couldn't see. It was pawing at the dead end, trying to tear it open and escape from the Edge.

"Chaz! The Rykros Ring was probably what was protecting the dog! Can't you try and hook it around its collar?"

Chaz reached for the dog's collar. It was a tight fit already, even though it was the largest size collar available. He wasn't convinced the Rykros Ring would fit in there as well. Rocky backed away from him, whimpering. Rika pulled him back just as he was about to put his foot down on a tile that was no longer there. The patterns of the Edge were starting to decay into static, their outlines surging and crackling. Where the dog trod, the tiles began to fall away. It was being driven into a corner. Chaz looked around and realised that they all were.

"The Rykros Ring's protective field is collapsing! We won't be able to escape at this rate!" yelled Rika.

"Okay, you need to grab hold of me and the dog just as I use Hinas. We'll just have to hope it works." said Chaz, "Okay... three, two, one..."

* * *

He remembered being engulfed in a bright white light, a sensation of floating, some kind of eerie music, then falling out of thin air into a sand dune. He spluttered and shook the sand out of his face.

"Chaz! Help me here!"

Chaz ran to help Rika restrain the dog. Now it was no longer trapped or in pain, its goal was once again to escape. It had completely forgotten that the two Hunters had fed it, tried to heal it and saved it from certain death. It was currently trying to bite Rika on the arm in the hope that she would loosen her grasp. Chaz took the remaining piece of shortcake and

"RIMIT!"

A green glow surrounded the dog and it went limp in Rika's arms. She knew only one person who could cast a paralysis technique with so much precision that it could hit something she was holding without affecting her and could control the power they put behind it to such a fine degree that they could paralyse a small dog without killing it. Besides, she recognised the voice, precise, well accented but slightly nervous.

"Hahn?"

"You shouldn't be soft on that dog." the scholar told her, "You haven't been feeding it, have you? You have no idea what that dog has to answer for. I'm glad you found it before its too late. Where was it this time?"

"Er..." Chaz held out the Rykros Ring.

"Oh, you found it! I thought I'd lost it forever."

"I don't think they digest well."

"Eww, you mean the dog actually...?" he gave the ring a hesitant look, now uncertain he should have picked it up, "That explains a few things, anyway. I was using it to hold my diploma. It was kind of symbolic, you know, of our journey. I had to delay finishing my PhD because I was busy fighting the Profound Darkness. Then the dog ate my diploma. I didn't think it would be stupid enough to eat the ring too!"

"Well, you can have the ring back, but we need the dog to complete our mission.." said Chaz, "That technique will wear off in time, right? I think we might get in trouble if the Guild think we harmed the dog. Do you have any really strong lab animal cages, by the way?"

"Um... that mission... it was kinda the reason I came to see you, actually..." Hahn muttered, "I need to talk to you about it. You see, you can't finish that mission. It'd be a really bad idea."

"What do you mean?"

"Tinkerbell's been studying Genetics at the University for a while now..."

"Oh God, she's not one of the crazies trying to make Biomonsters?"

"Worse than that. We think she might be trying to clone Rocky."

"What? Why?"

"She's obsessed with that dog. She couldn't bear it if anything ever happened to it. The dog's very old now. The way it eats, it should have been dead a long time ago. Somehow it stays alive but there's no way a dog's lifespan can be extended more than around five more years. Chaz... I've been down that basement. Its my job to keep the Biomonster experiments under control. She's making significant advances already. If we don't shut down that project, she'll have Rocky clones running around everywhere! Possibly with Biomonster DNA!"

"So... if we succeed with this mission... we've doomed the planet?" said Chaz.

"I'm sure if we explain what's happening to the Guild, they'll be lenient with us."

"I don't know... the secretary looked pretty strict about this one..." Chaz muttered, "That's assuming we can even hold the dog until we get back to the Guild. And that the Edge doesn't randomly pop up and eat us again."

"You'll help us, won't you, Hahn?"

"What, oh, sure." Hahn scratched his head, "I guess I'll be in your party for a little while longer... heh... its getting like old times, eh, Chaz?"

"Don't say that. You'll doom us all." said Chaz, "Rika? Why can't ever have just one straightforward mission?"

"Well, I haven't been a Hunter for as long as you have, but I'd say its because..." Rika looked over towards Aeido. The sun was low in the sky, painting the clouds orange and magenta, and the town's walls, tall and impenetrable, stood sillhouetted in black. The mission hadn't felt like it took all day but then time was always a little weird on the Edge, "Straightforward missions aren't high paid missions."


	4. Mission 3: Fissure of Failure

Mission 3: Fissure of Failure

"So... did you ever find the cloning lab?"

Hahn sipped at his drink, his constant nervous expression enhanced by the fact that the industrial grade coffee that Hunters had brewed for them by a Motavian with a squint and a grudge against the civilised world was threatening to overwhelm the Gelun technique he cast on himself so he could drink it. "Not yet but I think I have a few leads, now. I managed to wipe out another brood as well."

"You're a better fighter every time we see you!" Rika told him. Hahn looked more worried and also a little embarrassed at the praise from the Numan, whose slim, curvaceous figure, probably genetically engineered to perfection by some perverted male scientist, she still didn't understand the concept of properly covering up, understandable in an entity only created six years ago. Saya is your wife, he reminded himself.

"They were only prototypes." he said, "They weren't full Rockies yet."

"Well, once you do find something concrete, report it to the Guild at once!" said Chaz, "I hope we can solve this mystery before Tinkerbell creates a viable perfect clone."

"Don't get killed, hire a merc from the Hunter's guild!" sang another Hunter in the background, who was already drunk at nine in the morning, at the top of his voice, to the tune of 'Now On Sale', "Hire a skilled mercenary from the Guild!"

Hahn sighed. He wondered exactly what he was doing in such a place. Ten years ago, he would have been too terrified to set foot in the Hunter's Guild, never mind hang around the bar discussing commissions and watching mercenaries get drunk. These days he felt safer in here, around the two companions who had watched his back in countless battles and who had in turn depended on him for healing techniques, than in the Academy canteen, with the petty internecine quarrels over this and that grant or who plagiarised whose work and the biomonsters being bred in the basements. A part of him worried that he was starting to think too much like a warrior, not a scholar. He wasn't fit to ponder the mysteries of the Universe with his mind full of bloodlust. Dr. Lubetz wouldn't approve.

"That reminds me." said Chaz, "The reception desk should be open by now. We'd better check to see if there's any decent work today!"

Hahn watched Rika follow Chaz to the front desk. He felt his heart lurch, then cast Gelun again just in time.

"Ah, Chaz and Rika, you're just in time!" said the secretary, "I have a commission reserved especially for you!"

This usually meant some kind of trouble. "Really? What kind of commission?"

"Remember a Mr. Tallas Danvers?"

"The boy who fell down the hole?" said Rika, "I remember that mission! It was one of the first missions I went on with you, Chaz! You remember, don't you? When we thought he had been eaten by that Fract Ooze?"

"That's right." said the secretary, "And guess what..."

"He's fallen down a hole again?" guessed Chaz.

"That's right!"

"Isn't he a little old for falling down holes now?" asked Chaz.

"Maybe I should explain in more detail." said the secretary, "You see, he hasn't JUST fallen down a hole. Tallas Danvers has moved on a little since you last saw him – in fact, he's rather a famous explorer now. He specialises in caving. He was on his tenth planned expedition to travel to the other side of the world when he became separated from the party and disappeared. No rescue team has been able to find any trace of his existence."

"Oh, great." Chaz sighed, "I guess being nearly eaten by a Fract Ooze didn't put him off."

"How many times have we been almost eaten by Fract Oozes, Chaz?" asked Rika, "I counted eleven."

"So, where exactly did this expedition take place?" asked Chaz, shooting a black look at Rika.

"The famous Uzo Abyss." said the secretary, "The deepest cave in Algol. Nobody has ever reached the bottom and lived to tell the tale. Tallas has a theory that it is so deep that it actually reaches right through the planet and emerges on the other side. And before you suggest it, Chaz, Hinas and Ryuka techniques don't work down there. Neither do any other techniques that you might consider horribly misusing."

"So you actually expect us to go down there?" asked Chaz, "Down the bottomless hole of doom that even famous explorers can't go down without disappearing, when neither of us know anything about caving at all and we can't even use Ryuka?"

"Don't worry, the rest of the expedition team will be able to escort you down there."

"The team that lost him in the first place?"

"They're the most elite explorers on Motavia! They've worked with the Guild countless times before and they've never led any Hunters to their deaths yet. The Academy hires them for all their major archeological expeditions too. Like Professor Holt's expedition to Birth Valley."

"This job had better pay well!"

"Fifty thousand Meseta."

"We'll take it." said Rika.

"The fact that techniques are disrupted at the lower levels of the trench is actually quite fascinating." said Hahn, "Professor Holt currently believes that the phenomenon is caused by the intense magnetic fields at the planet's core. There's even a theory that Dimension Worms and Outerbeasts actually live at the bottom of the Uzo Abyss and not in another dimension at all, and that they use the phenomenon to their own advantage in order to..."

"Are you sure you don't want to come with us, Hahn?" asked Chaz, "You haven't stopped talking about the mission since we left the Guild."

"While it would be fascinating, it would take too much time out of my mission to find the clone labs." said Hahn, "And I'm not sure how useful I'll be in an environment where techniques don't work. To be honest, it sounds a little dangerous for me! I wouldn't mind travelling with you for a while, though, just to see the Abyss."

The following day, as Chaz looked out over the ocean at the raging currents and tidal waves that surrounded the jagged peaks from which a hole had been torn roughly, as if by some kind of giant rock-eating Sandworm the size of a small town, he wondered if it was too dangerous even for him. They had rented the Motavian's Hydrofoil again – miraculously it was still seaworthy. Even though he had made it from things he had found in the dump, the old Motavian seemed to be rather an expert mechanic and also a good sailor.

"I wouldn't go into the Abyss if I were you." he told Chaz, "The dragon lives there."

"Don't be silly." said Chaz, "Dragons don't exist."

"Actually, there are fossils that have been excavated of reptiles that almost exactly match the descriptions of dragons." said Hahn, "They would have lived two thousand years ago, though. They're probably extinct by now. From what little I know of mythology," he added, "Because Alis Landale kept killing them all."

"Do you think we could take on a dragon, Chaz?" asked Rika, "Theoretically, of course."

"It can't be as dangerous as the Profound Darkness." Chaz said, mostly to reassure himself. It had become somewhat of a mantra for him lately.

"You can't compare every battle to that one! The circumstances are completely different! We haven't got the Elsydeon or Rune's help or anything!" she complained.

The argument about whether dragons existed or not and whether Chaz could slay one single-handedly continued the entire duration of the voyage. The Motavian dropped them on the tiny island just off the coast of Uzo and immediately set sail again. Hahn left with him. The expedition party set to work preparing them for their descent. Chaz watched them test their ropes, fasten them and tie all the equipment and provisions they needed, while asking them questions about the mission such as when they had last seen Tallas, whether there were any dangerous animals down there such as Zol Slugs. When they finished, Chaz and Rika were fastened to the ropes and they began to climb down.

Chaz was surprised by how dark it soon became, especially once the low power Thu technique he used to light the way stopped working. The darkness weighed down upon him. He could no longer tell where Rika was except for her footsteps, heavy breathing and the occasional scrape of weapons and armour against the rock. There were other sounds, eerie in the pitch darkness where only his imagination could give them form, dripping, oozing sounds, the occasional howl. He wanted to draw his sword at every noise but he was afraid he would fall to his death if he let go of the rope. It was cold too. He wished he had worn the clothes he bought in Dezolis to cope with the weather on the ice planet. Motavia was usually warm but not underground. He was losing track of time as well, without the sun to mark its passage.

He heard a Gra technique being cast – a magnetic hum coupled with a slight smell of ozone – and he did draw his sword this time. He heard Rika yell out and slice at something with her claws. His skin began to prickle and the hum grew in intensity to a static hiss. Shapes flitted past, patches of darkness even more intense than the lack of light. He swung at them with his sword. They seemed to part before the blow of his blade but he couldn't tell whether he was actually damaging the thing, whatever it was – there seemed to be multiple of them, or maybe one very big one, but he had no way of telling. He felt a sharp pain down his leg. He screamed and kicked out. An electric shock went down his entire leg, causing him to convulse. Rika screamed as well and her claw flashed over his head. Something sinuous and dark just above his head flew away, its opportunity to pounce on him and eat his brains ruined.

"Thank y-" he said, then suddenly the world lurched beneath him. His arms flailed out and grabbed onto the nearest thing – Rika.

"What are you doing, Chaz, I can't hold you and fight at the same time!"

"You cut my rope!" he yelled. His head reeled from the abrupt fall and stop.

"Oh, sorry!" she yelled, her claws a blur again, "HEY! No standing on my head!"

"There's nothing else I can really use as a..." he began. Then one of the shapes flew right at him. He swung his sword around at it. He felt solid resistance, unusually so. "Uh-oh."

"Chaz, what's that noise? Why did you go 'uh-oh?' Chaz?"

Before he could answer, the rope, cut almost clean through by his sword, snapped and they plummeted screaming into the Abyss.


	5. Mission 3: Fissure of Failure, Part 2

Chaz opened his eyes.

He knew he wasn't dead. Dead Protectors of Algol, he knew, went into the Elsydeon, which, as far as he could remember, didn't look anything like this. It was blue and floaty and ethereal and inside a sword. He was on solid ground – well, as solid as the desert sands of Motavia could really be – it was dark, the dead of night, not very sword-shaped and the spirit of Alis Landale wasn't around. Not that the spirit of Alis couldn't pester him anyway if she really wanted to. He wished she wouldn't. She reminded him of Alys.

So, he wasn't dead, he was no longer inside the Abyss, so where was he?

"Chaz!"

He was relieved to see that Rika was still alive too. She had a few cuts and bruiseses that were already healing under the Res technique she used on them – techniques were working for him as well, he found when he tried to heal his own wounds – and her hair had gone a little fuzzy from the static electricity of the several Gra techniques used on them both but they were both free from any serious injury.

"Chaz, look!" she pointed up at the sky. It was a clear night and Chaz could see all the stars.

"Beautiful." he commented, "I miss the sky already. I'm never going underground again, even if there's a sandstorm."

"Chaz, can't you see? All the constellations are different! Chaz, we're not in the same hemisphere!"

"We're on the other side of the world?"

"We really are, Chaz! Look around, Chaz, it actually looks really different!"

The landscape was particularly unspoiled. Usually there were traces of the old terraforming systems put in place by the Palmans of the Second Era, the ruins of machine centres, biomonster hives or places where it was still inexplicably green. This was pure desert as far as he could see. The sand was a different colour as well, a darker shade of orange, like the desert always was in the Motavian folk tales. He remembered Hahn telling him that only one side of Motavia was ever colonised, simply because it was a huge planet compared to Palma, there weren't many surviving Palmans and they had no real way to travel that far.

"That means Tallas must be around here somewhere." he said, "He can't have gone far in such a short space of time without proper supplies. Let's look!"

"I hope he hasn't been eaten by anything." said Rika, following him through the desert. It began to rejoin the mountains and they found themselves walking through a narrow gulch, "What were those things anyway? Why didn't they eat us when we fell down?"

"Dimensworms, I'm guessing." said Chaz, "And I think we may have accidentally fallen through one of their portals."

"I thought they were tiny portals."

"There was more than one worm. Maybe they sort of merge together to make one big portal?"

"Or too many of them make a rift in time." suggested Rika, "Like the big one we found that led to the Edge. We found Outerbeasts there, too. Maybe its all related?"

"Are you saying that worms are causing space and time to fall apart? That's crazy. Next you'll be saying that Rocky is behind it all."

"I wouldn't be surpri... hey, look!" Rika pointed ahead of them at a cave mouth.

"I'm not going back underground!" yelled Chaz. Then he fell silent again. In front of the cave mouth was a bundle of cloth. As they walked closer, he saw that it was an expedition backpack and sleeping bag.

"It could belong to Tallas!" said Rika.

They searched through it but didn't find any identifying items, only a few packets of dried food rations, some eaten, a couple of torches, a rope, extra blankets and a map.

"I guess he doesn't randomly throw his shoes off when he goes on adventures any more." said Rika.

"Hey, who was that?"

Chaz heard the whine of a laser rifle being charged up. He rolled out of the way and drew his sword. Seconds later, Rika was behind the man, claws levelled at his throat.

"Leave me alone, you thieves!" yelled the man, "I haven't got anything for you to steal! How did you get here anyway? I bet you're lost, aren't you? You'll never get home without me! I'm not lost! I'm never lost!"

"You're not?" asked Chaz. The man had blonde hair, like Chaz's but messier, with the beginnings of a beard. He wore the outfit of the expedition company.

"The great adventurer, Tallas Danvers, does not get lost!"

"You're Tallas? Perfect! You're just who we're looking for!" said Rika, her stance relaxing and her weapons dropping back to her sides.

"What do you want me for? Do you need me to rescue you from peril!"

"Actually, we're Hunters, and..."

"Hunters? Who hired Hunters after me? Do they want me dead or alive? I didn't do it!"

"The rest of your expedition party said you were lost..."

"I AM NEVER LOST!" he bellowed.

"Well, you should go and tell them that. They're worried about you." said Rika, "Don't you recognise us? We helped you out of that hole you fell down when you were a child!"

"I did not FALL down the hole! I climbed down it! What's more, you didn't help me out of it, I distinctly remember climbing out of it myself! And as for that giant slug you would have totally been too late to save me from if it had actually wanted to eat me.."

Suddenly, his irate rant was cut short by a loud roar.

Rika whirled around, claws out again. Chaz jumped in front of Tallas too. He aimed his gun at the cave mouth. A scaly reptilian head the size of most of Chaz's torso emerged from the cave. It blinked sideways at Chaz, its eye rolled, then it roared again, so loud that it shook rocks from the sides of the gully. More of its neck, long and slender, covered in fiery red scales, as well as the tips of leathery wings, began to follow its head out of the cavern.

"RUN!" yelled Tallas. The Hunters decided to follow his experienced adventurer's advice.

"Wait, don't run that way!" yelled Tallas.

"What? Why not?" Chaz yelled back, having to bellow at the top of his voice to be heard over the dragon's roaring. As he looked back and saw it still stomping after them, snapping with its sharp teeth the size of his sword, he thought it was the perfect direction to run in. The gulch was narrowing and the massive creature would have difficulty fitting through it, or at least wouldn't have much room to manoeuvre.

"That's where its mate always goes to hunt!"

"WHAT?"

Another roar began to answer the dragon's, a much deeper tone, forming a morbidly melodic duet of death. Another dragon, several feet taller than the first, with a crest of bone on its head that presumably marked it as a male, stormed around the corner so suddenly that they almost walked straight into it. Its roar demanded an explanation. The female dragon roared back a complaint staring balefully at the noisy intruders. The male dragon peered at them as well, its head tilting, its eye swivelling to the corner of its eyelid.

"Get back, everyone!"

"Get back to where? We're completely surrounded!" yelled Chaz.

"Anywhere! That's what it does before it breathes fire!"

The male dragon roared again and opened its mouth. Chaz saw the air around its head ripple as it was superheated. He tried to duck underneath the female dragon's feet but it kept shifting away. Rika tried to hide behind Chaz. The air flared red, then a gout of flame erupted from the dragon's mouth toward them.

"NAWAT!"

There was a sound like a fridge exploding as a pillar of supercooled energy punched through the air, instantly extinguishing the flames. The dragon gave a surprised roar and turned its head around to give the newcomer a glare of pure genocidal loathing. Using what she knew to be the one opening she would get, Rika jumped up onto its neck and stabbed it in both eyes with her claws. It screeched in agony. Chaz ran forward, thrust his sword into its mouth and stabbed it through where he hoped its brain was. They both jumped backwards as it fell to the ground with a resounding thud. Witnessing the death of its mate, the female dragon bellowed its fury and charged at them. Another Nawat was hurled, this time straight at its head, which was completely frozen in the ice. They didn't look back to see whether this had killed it; they darted behind the corpse of the male dragon and kept on running.

"Are there any more dragons you might like to warn us about?" asked Chaz. Tallas shook his head.

"I've only had time to explore this small area and so far I've found no others. They take up a lot of space, you know."

"Is that an actual dragon?"

"I think it may even be descended from the Casbah dragon."

"Wow, fascinating! We should go back and dissect it later if we have the time."

"Hahn, what are you doing here?" asked Chaz, "I thought you went back to the Academy!"

"A Leviathan attacked the Hydrofoil on the way back, I got thrown overboard in the confusion, it was closer to swim back to the Abyss and, well, I thought it wouldn't hurt to have a little poke around such a fascinating natural phenomenon..."

"And you fell in?" asked Rika.

"A thing dragged me in!" complained Hahn, "It had teeth! It used Gra on me!"

"Ah, yes, the Dimension Worms." said Tallas, "That's how I got here as well! They seem to live near the centre of the Earth, in the middle of the Abyss, and create the portals using the technique distortion in order to hunt near the surface. The space-time continuum is so distorted by their constant use of portals, it creates a permanent portal large enough for humans to pass through from one side of the hole to the other. They're fascinating."

"You're all as insane as each other." said Chaz.

"You mean, you have evidence to back up Professor Holt's theory?" asked Hahn, "You have to come back to the Academy right now and report this!"

"But... I've only just got here! I've discovered the thing I've spent my entire life looking for!" complained Tallas, "We can't just leave! We don't know what else there is here to explore!"

"We can always get back here through the hole." Rika reminded him, "It isn't going anywhere."

"I have no idea whether that will work again!"

"Well, then, we should find out." said Rika.

"She has a point. It would be unscientific not to try it again." said Hahn, "We should see if it works going through the other way as well."

"Why are you on their side? They're conspiring to get us killed!" complained Chaz.

"You want to get home too, don't you, Chaz?" said Rika.

"Well, yes, but..."

"We have to get back to the Guild so that we can receive our commission!"

"But couldn't we just..."

"And we need to make sure the rest of the expedition team are okay! We can't just abandon them, Chaz!"

The Hunter sighed, "Okay, if you insist!"

"Excellent! Now, we need to do this scientifically this time! I happened to have time to fetch some recording equipment on my way here..."

"Just happened, eh? There really is an Academy conspiracy to make my life a nightmare..." complained Chaz, but he followed them anyway as they ran back to the hole, excitedly discussing quantum fluctuations, "Aaargh, please don't forget about the dragon!"

"Well done, Chaz, you've successfully completed your commission! Everyone from the expedition has returned safe and sound!" said the receptionist, "It looks like it was a difficult job. You sure took your time!"

"That was an absolute living nightmare." said Chaz, his eyes wide and staring as though he had drunk five cups of Hunter-grade coffee in a row, "I never want to do that again, even for twice the pay!"

"Oh, that's good, because nobody was about to give you twice the pay."

"I don't think it was that bad, Chaz." said Rika, "At least we actually completed the mission without any complications. Hahn seems happy, too."

The scientist had already left for the Academy with the explorer, promising to continue looking for the clone labs without any distractions this time. Tallas told him that he intended to return to the Abyss again as soon as possible, hopefully this time with a research grant from Professor Holt.

"As long as I get paid." said Chaz.

"Oh – I've just had a message from the Expedition Company." said the receptionist, "Apparently, there's been some problems with processing your pay. Some kind of internal dispute."

"What do you mean, internal dispute?" asked Chaz, his hand reaching to his sword, with the intention of causing an internal dispute with someone's vital organs if he didn't get paid soon.

"Apparently, one of the heads of the Company didn't want Tallas to come back. They were annoyed with him always falling down holes and needing to be rescued. He does it every other week and always seems to survive somehow. They had given him funding to explore the Abyss with the intention of him falling to his death. Whoever hired the Hunter's Guild without permission is in big trouble!"

"That's a terrible attitude! The Hunter's Guild would never betray one of its members in such an underhand way, no matter how badly they messed up, right?" said Rika.

"... No. We never do such things." said the receptionist after a long pause, "Don't worry, we'll get your pay as soon as possible. The reputation of the Guild is at stake! We can't have customers not paying their fees! In fact, seeing as you're here, I'll send out a reliable team of Hunters to collect the debt at once!"

"What do you mean, seeing as I'm here? Why can't you do it without me here?"

"Well, I don't see any other reliable teams of Hunters around, do you? Its getting kind of late."

"What the... you can't..."

"Don't argue with the receptionist, Chaz, remember what happened last time!" warned Rika. Chaz sighed. It was definitely one of THOSE commissions.


	6. Mission 4

Mission 4: Hunt for the Shameless Dark Savior Parody

"Rika! Guess what I found?"

"A mission well paid enough to bother going on that won't get us killed horribly?" guessed Rika, yawning. Due to certain key differences in Numan biochemistry, the famous Hunter's Guild own-brand coffee had a mild sedative effect on her.

"No, my Hunter's Journal!" he produced a fairly hefty Sandworm leather-bound book that also had handy wallet pockets for commission details and receipts, as well as a concealed blade or two, "I lost it years ago! I completely forgot I had it! Then I tidied up the books on the table and there it was! Look, there's my first ever Guild commission!"

"'Clean out the rats in the basement'?" she read over his shoulder, "Hey, Chaz... what is that?"

"What?" he asked. She pulled something out of one of the larger wallets. It was a large blue flower, its petals seeming not to be affected in the slightest by either years of neglect or Rika's rough handling.

"Chaz, is this from a girl?" she demanded, "Is there something you're not telling me?"

"Huh? Er... I don't remember anything about this..."

In truth, the poignant scent brought back faint memories to Chaz – of what, he couldn't quite remember, it was blurry and confusing.

"Oh, so you've met so many girls you don't remember them all?" she folded her arms.

"Um... I... er..." Chaz found himself sweating, "Hey, what kind of flower is this anyway? I've never seen any flowers like that blooming on Motavia!"

"No changing the subject!"

"Chaz Ashley? Chaz Ashley, I have a commission for you!"

Chaz stood up and walked to the reception desk. Saved by the bell, he thought. Oblivious to what was going on, the receptionist was calmly sorting out a pile of paperwork. She gave Chaz her usual secretarial auto-smile.

"I know you haven't exactly been satisfied with the quality of the commissions you've been receiving lately – something about the risk factor compared to the reward – so I found you a more straightforward job with a rather attractive pay package."

"That's thoughtful of you."

"Its from the village chief of Uzo. His daughters are missing again."

"Oh, great. He did remember to pay us the commission AND their bail money on top, right? At least its only a short walk..."

"I'm afraid its not going to be."

"What's not going to be what?"

"A short walk." said the receptionist, "The local jail is only for first time offences. Not for twenty-third offences."

"They've tried to sleep in that inn without paying TWENTY-THREE TIMES?"

"Some people never learn." she shrugged, "Anyway, Guild information tells us that they're being held in Neo Triada, the escape-proof prison island just off the coast of Kadary."

"Neo Triada? Isn't that a bit drastic? That's the highest-security prison on the planet!"

"Well, if they put them anywhere else, teams of Hunters randomly turn up and rescue them." she said, "Anyway, we've had no luck contacting the island, we can't get any communication through at all. You're going to have to go there yourself and talk things over with the Warden."

"I thought you said this was an easy mission." said Chaz.

"It is. Provided you don't decide to break into the prison and accidentally set free all the mass murderers or something, there are very few ways for you to get yourself killed." she said.

"How much did you say the pay was again?"

"One million Meseta." she said.

"HOW MUCH?"

"Well, there's a little job that the Guild wants you to do on the side, while you're there." she said, "We have reason to believe that the Warden is plotting against us. He has a reputation for being a cruel psychopath with some unsavoury political ambitions. I want to know why he's cut off all communications with the outside world, not just the Guild, for almost two years now, why he hasn't released several prisoners who have served their times over the last two years, all of whom are ex-Hunters, and why the last team of Hunters we sent to investigate never came back."

"... you lied about this being a straightforward mission, didn't you?"

"Well... yes." she said, "But its in the interest of the Guild."

"Look, this commission really doesn't sound like my..."

"Hello, is that your Hunter's Journal? I thought you'd lost that ages ago!"

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Say, do you happen to know anything about this..." he reached into the Journal and pulled out the blue flower. Suddenly, a wave of memories as vivid as a lucid dream hit him with the force of a Megid technique. An island shrouded in mist and storms... a girl... a fierce battle... a vat of green goo...

"Chaz, are you quite alright?"

He blinked and looked up, his senses reeling from the intensity of what had just happened to his mind.

"If you really don't want this job, its okay, I'll give it to someone else."

"N... no... its okay... its just... er... I really need the bathroom..." he muttered, before running off down the corridor, ignoring her yells of protest at him ignoring the 'No Running in the Guildhall' sign.

"Chaz? Did you accept the commission?" asked Rika, watching him run straight past her, "...Chaz?"

* * *

That night, Chaz couldn't sleep. Every time he tried, all he saw in his dreams was that same memory. He found himself leaning on the balcony outside, gazing out at the stars. He remembered the last time he had been so troubled he couldn't sleep, like this. It had been after the death of his life-long mentor, Alys. Even after so many years, everything reminded him of her. Finding his Journal took him back to the time when she used to nag him endlessly about remembering to fill the Journal in and scold him when he was disorganised and forgot to fill it in. The oldest commission slips still had her name on them, with him co-signing them as her apprentice. He remembered her constant criticism of him during the missions – his swing was too slow, he was too fast, he was too clumsy and noisy, he was rude to the client, he was inaccurate at counting out his earnings. She was always saving his life back then. And then, on their final mission together, she had made the ultimate sacrifice...

He froze. His Hunter's instincts were picking up a subtle change in the atmosphere. He could hear someone breathing – someone watching him, someone not entirely friendly. His hand went to the hilt of his sword.

"We will not hurt you. Turn around quietly. Come with us." whispered a high-pitched voice.

He turned his head slowly. In the darkness, several pairs of bulbous red eyes shone.

He remembered being escorted out of Aiedo by a well-armed group of Motavians – around five or six, he would say, it was hard to be sure because they were silent, taking pains not to be seen, and didn't look at him or talk to him – into a vehicle that was like a Landrover but a lot more shabby, then driven out into the desert. He recognised the tunnel that led to Tonoe. He was told to put on a blindfold. He said he knew the route into Tonoe anyway but they told him that it had changed and he wasn't allowed to see it. He walked in complete darkness, aware of nothing except a whispered but heated argument in Motavian and something disgusting and squelchy that he had accidentally trodden in. He was more bemused than worried that he had suddenly been taken hostage. He hadn't seen a Motavian, even Gryz, for five years now. They didn't seem to want to kill him. Through fighting alongside Gryz, he knew almost all the many Motavian words for 'kill' and he was fairly sure he had heard the word for 'hostage' at least once. The words they used most often were 'Palman' and 'stupid'.

After around half an hour, the blindfold came off and he was promptly temporarily blinded by the Motavian mid-day sun shining through the canvas of a large white tent. When he recovered, he was staring into the broad, blue-feathered, owl-tufted face of Gryz. His expression was impossible to read, due to it consisting entirely of a beak. Out of his peripheral vision, he spotted five other Motavian warriors leaning on their axes, laser pistols at their belts. They looked very vigilant.

"Oh, hello, Gryz. You know, you could always just come around for a cup of coffee at any time like a normal person."

"I'm sorry about your reception, but such precautions are necessary in this day and age." said Gryz, "The Motavian Elder council have become increasingly paranoid. It has taken me a long time to persuade them to allow you into Tonoe at all. We hear you're trying to get onto the Rock."

"You know about my mission?"

"There are Motavian Hunters." he gestured at the guards, "My friends here are among their elite. I can help you, Chaz. We have our own ways of getting in and out of Neo Triada. Underground tunnels. You won't be able to get onto the island through the normal channels. The Warden has the place under total lockdown. He doesn't know about the entrances that the Motavians use. We have a lot underground that you Palmans don't know about. We are not stupid enough to try and live out in the desert. We break Motavian prisoners out sometimes, when we believe they are being unfairly treated. The ones who really are murderers and terrorists, we leave to the fate they deserve."

"Thank you, Gryz, any help is appreciated, but what is happening here? Why are the Motavians acting like this?"

"You wouldn't understand. Motavians have never been treated fairly by Palman society. We were oppressed under the reign of Lashiec – a Palman ruler. Queen Alis treated us as equals, but then we were treated as an underclass by the Second Era Government - our beautiful desert mechanically altered against our will for the purposes of the Palman refugees, endangering the lives of the Motavians who had adapted to live in the desert – then Zio attacked Molcum, massacring the entire town, while the Palmans did nothing but watch! We do not trust Palmans any more. We put up with you during the fight against Dark Force because it was a danger that could so easily have wiped out the entire planet had we not all banded together, and because we felt sorry for you, your own planet being destroyed. We no longer want anything to do with Palmans, Chaz, we do not consider you our friends. The Elder Council recognise you as one of the heroes who slew Zio, so they at least tolerate you being here. They do not extend the favour to any others of your kind."

"So why help me in this mission?"

"Several reasons. Firstly, you're my friend and I can't just shun you like this. Secondly, we know things about that island that you Palmans don't. We want to make sure you have proper information before you try and wander around there. For instance, the Warden."

"I've heard he's a tough one."

"SHE is female, stupid Palman. And you must not engage in any conflict with her. Under no circumstances must she come to any harm. If you do so, we declare war on you. Also, if you impede the functioning of the prison in any way or harm the island. Understand?"

"Er... okay." Chaz had no particular desire to break into a prison and kill the Warden. He was beginning to think that the whole mission was a complete waste of time.

"We have run out of time. The Elders want to see you out of here as soon as possible. We will take you to the island now."

Chaz was blindfolded again. The sun was setting now, it was starting to cool and he could hear the town starting to come to life – the cries of merchants displaying their wares and haggling furiously, children running around and playing lively games, dogs barking, some kind of prophet of doom being dragged off a podium by the town guards. It was the same as he remembered Tonoe, back when he was looking for Alshline in the basement, when he had first met Gryz. Zio had only just hit. The town hadn't changed. They had never forgotten and never forgiven.

The blindfold went back on and he went back into the caves. He walked for a long time, then emerged into daylight. He heard the roar of the ocean and the distinctive sound of a Hydrofoil not working, being shouted at and kicked a lot, then he was hurried onto it and it sputtered into life. When the blindfold came off, he was in the middle of the ocean. Just on the horizon, he could see jagged brown cliffs, foreboding and unwelcoming.

"We will arrive at the rear cliff face of the island. It is believed to be sheer rock but there is an underwater cave entrance." said Gryz, "We will point it out to you, but I'm afraid I'll have to leave you to it, then."

"You have to get back to your little sister?" asked Chaz. The warrior nodded, "How are you two doing?"

"Quite well. I'm the Captain of the Tonoe Guard. I was greatly honoured for my part in defeating Zio. Pana is a revered healer. Did you know her name is short for Panacea? She has always had a talent for the healing arts. She still asks about you, Chaz. I wish you well in your mission and I hope one day we will be in a position to meet again."

Chaz nodded and looked out across the rail of the Hydrofoil. Lightning struck the dread, bleak rock, illuminating it in a ghostly aura.


	7. Mission 4, Part 2

The Hydrofoil came to a stop just short of the Island and Gryz pointed Chaz towards the cave entrance, just visible under the water.

"Watch out for sharks!"

Although no sharks attacked them – Chaz could see a pack of them up ahead, closer to the entrance, circling the waters, scanning for prey – actually getting onto the Island was proving to be almost enough to kill them in itself. Rika was a much better swimmer than Chaz – the scientists who created her obviously thought of that when they designed her genetic traits – and so didn't almost drown trying to get through the cave and didn't fall to her death trying to scale the wall on the other end. Who decided to make ledges at such bizarre angles? They couldn't possibly be natural – they barely complied with the laws of physics. Finally, Rika dragged Chaz out of the hole and they were on the Island proper.

The prison building loomed above him, an older building that looked like it had been converted from some kind of baroque castle rather than purpose-built. The modern security systems, which looked like they even included some automated defense drones, were an odd contrast. It was massive, taking up most of the island, easily enough to house a couple of thousand prisoners. He soon discovered that the fields around the prison were actually quite treacherous marshland. Wooden walkways had been constructed, although they were also at odd angles and built as platforms for more security systems in case any prisoners tried to escape through the marsh, not for ease of use, and Rika had to pull him back up again after he almost fell off a couple of times. Growing in the swamp were more of the blue flowers. They were delicate and beautiful and Chaz thought they looked out of place on the harsh prison island. He was even more surprised when he discovered, once he reached the building and the swamp began to thin out, that someone was attempting to cultivate a garden of them. A spade lay abandoned next to a small patch of cleared land where they were beginning to grow.

He turned around to point them out to Rika but she wasn't there. The ground swung around at the same strange angle as the ledges so that he was afraid he would fall through the floor. He staggered and barely corrected his balance. When he looked up, Alys was advancing towards him through the marsh, like a wraith. Her eyes glowed red with an inhuman fury. Her slicers were drawn, ready to throw.

He drew his sword. Illusions of Alys had attacked him before. However, that was in the Tower of Silence, on another planet that probably didn't even orbit the same sun any more, and they had still been capable of killing him, despite not being real. Confusion – the ground swung around at such odd angles that he could have sworn he was travelling backwards in time – mixed with sorrow at seeing his dead mentor attacking him AGAIN, and rage at the non-physical being who exploited his feelings. Megido lay just at the edge of his consciousness, whispering at him to unleash its destructive power...

"CHAZ!"

Something fast and agile - some kind of brightly-coloured bird? - lunged at him, causing him to fall straight through the floor, through the world and around the other side, suspended on the ceiling. His head spun with vertigo and he felt his stomach rebelling against him.

"Chaz, don't you dare throw up all over me! Wake up, you moron!"

A sudden impact woke him up. Rika was slapping him on the face repeatedly. He was covered in swamp water.

"Wh... what happened?"

"Those flowers... they're actually potent psychotropic drugs!"

"Oh." he said, "That explains a lot." Such as why his dreams had been so odd since he found the flower in the Journal, and why he had taken to hiding them in his Hunter's Journal as a trainee in the first place, "Sorry."

"Don't worry. I didn't recognise them at first. They don't affect Numans." she said, "I only recognise them from Hahn telling me about them. They're very rare, and when students get their hands on them... well, you can imagine."

Chaz shuddered. If he was scared of what students could do with that amount of drugs, he didn't want to think about what hardened criminals would do with them! He hoped that the flowers were growing there just so that the prisoners couldn't possibly escape through the dangerous terrain while hopped up on drugs that made the floor melt away underneath them, and not for any of the countless more sinister reasons he was thinking up.

"We need to avoid the flowers, from now on, and cover our faces so we don't breathe in the spores." he decided.

"A door's opening!" said Rika, pointing upwards. There was some kind of railing with platforms bolted to the sides of the prison, also at odd angles. At the top was a small square door that was just sliding open. Chaz bolted up the stairs and scrambled through the door. He barely fit inside. As he scrambled through the tunnel, he heard a low mechanical hum that grew louder. He barely flattened himself to the floor as a moving platform shot over his head and down the corridor. He distinctly heard a 'meow?'.

Rika pointed up. Regarding them with an expression of contempt towards an inferior race in its slit green eyes was a small, bushy-tailed ginger cat. Chaz was about to comment on this fact when the feline turned its back on him, licked itself with a regal dignity and waited for the moving platform to leave the corridor and head outside.

"Er..."

"An automated security CAT FLAP? This prison really does have it all!" said Rika.

"Why is there a cat in the first place?"

"Maybe its the Warden's cat?"

"The Warden doesn't strike me as the animal-loving type."

"Evil people have cats." Rika pointed out.

After a while, the tunnel ended in a steep drop, which Chaz assumed the platform was supposed to lift something up, but which he actually ended up falling down. At the bottom was a metal balcony filled with industrial equipment and large, heavy crates. A couple of burly Motavians in black and white striped prison uniforms were lifting the crates, supervised by a black-uniformed guard armed with a sword. The prisoners were arguing and slacking off and the guard was yelling at them. Compared to what Chaz had seen so far, he was relieved to find something so normal.

Running behind a pile of crates, they managed to sneak up close to the party. Chaz reckoned he could overpower the three of them before they could run for help, but he wasn't sure what good it would do. They could follow them, but there was no guarantee they would go anywhere near where the two girls were being held. The prison was huge and they could be anywhere. He guessed they were in some kind of low security part of the prison, or maybe some part reserved for vulnerable prisoners, as they were fairly harmless. However, that would be what a sane Warden would do, who wasn't evil. They needed to find a map of some kind, or the security camera room.

"Okay, that's the last one." said the guard after the prisoners moved the crate onto the pile. Another prisoner that Chaz hadn't spotted before, up in the crane tower, moved the crane and lifted the chain on the platform so that all the crates moved up to the balcony, "Let's move out."

"Yay, lunch break!" said one of the prisoners.

"Hey, Meg said she wanted to see you at lunch break." said the other prisoner, "Miss your appointment and you're dead, got it?"

"You bastard, you told her where I was?"

"I'm not getting out of favour with the Boss."

"Some friend you are, Mabel." grunted the first, before trudging off after the guard.

"... Mabel?" asked Rika.

"I guess they must be female Motavians." said Chaz, "To tell you the truth, I can't tell the difference."

"Are we in a women's prison?"

"Well, duh, did you think the daughters would be in a men's prison?"

"Chaz, I let you sneak into a women's prison and you didn't even tell me?" she glared at him.

"Sssh, they're getting away!" said Chaz, "If they're eating, they might all be in the same place! Its our best chance!"

They followed the guard and the two prisoners out of the warehouse and down the corridor. It was becoming increasingly difficult to hide, what with the narrow corridors without much cover and the security cameras everywhere, but the guards were more interested in keeping the prisoners in line and the prisoners more interested in avoiding being stabbed in the back by each other to notice a couple of Hunters sneaking around. They went past a few more factory rooms, down a corridor full of cells and into a busy kitchen area, where the prisoners were milling around waiting to be fed, with the usual commotion, yelling, shoving, punching each other in the face and the odd impromptu escape attempt. They were mostly Motavian but Chaz was uncomfortably apparent from watching the few Palmans that they were, indeed, all female.

"Look, its that cat again!" Rika whispered. The ginger cat had appeared from around the corridor. It regarded them with a beady eye, then began to mew at them. It was a not particularly pleasant meow, one that demanded an explanation for their presence.

"Shut up, you'll give us away!" whispered Chaz. So far, none of the guards or prisoners even looked at the cat. In fact, he swore he saw a couple of the prisoners deliberately try and avoid making eye contact with it.

"Maybe its a trained guard cat." said Rika, "A cybernetic trained guard cat. You can't always tell, under all the fur."

"Meow!" complained the cat.

"I said, shoo!" said Chaz, "Rika, do cats like shortcake?"

"I don't think so." said Rika.

_What are you doing here, suspicious-looking person, meow?_

Chaz jumped. Rika hissed and pulled him down to the floor again. He checked that his mask was securely fastened. Did that cat just talk to him?

"Warden, is everything okay? What are you staring at?" yelled one of the guards. He looked directly at Chaz and the cat. Chaz tried to hide further behind the potted plant. The cat hissed. A second later, the guard shrugged and looked away again.

_We had better go somewhere else and talk, meow, everyone is being loud and annoying here. Follow me, meow._

Chaz shrugged. It was becoming increasingly dangerous to be here, where he could alert everyone on the island if he made one wrong move, and he couldn't see the daughters, the Warden was about to turn up and Rika was giving him odd glances because of his increasingly difficulty in hiding the fact that a cat was talking to him. The cat in question turned around and headed down the corridor. Chaz made a vague excuse to Rika and then followed it. The cat strolled to the end of the corridor, then jumped through another of the catflap-ducts. A platform appeared under its feet and rose to the next floor up. The Hunters weren't given the luxury of their own platform, so they had to climb up. The cat licked its paws as it watched their struggle, amusement in its eyes.

_Don't worry, meow, it isn't far to my office._

"You have an office?" asked Chaz.

"Chaz, what are you talking about?" asked Rika, "Are you quite alright? Why exactly are we following a cat again?"

Chaz gulped. He hadn't meant to say that out loud. Now Rika would think he was still crazy and hit him.

"Um... I mean... I was... just talking out loud. I think we should find the Warden's office. Yes. While he... she's not in it. She's bound to have some kind of documents that say where the daughters are."

"Chaz, how are we supposed to find the Warden's office if we can't find..."

Suddenly, Rika screamed. The floor had opened up beneath her. Chaz knelt down and made a grab for her, but her fingertips slipped out of his grasp. He saw her fall towards what looked like a large vat of green goo. Screaming her name, he lowered himself through the hole and jumped down after her. He wasn't sure how exactly it would help but it was the only thing he could think of to do.

The last thing he saw as he fell was the cat. It had its paw on some kind of lever. It was staring at him in the same way it would look at a mouse.


	8. Mission 4, Part 3

When Chaz woke up again, his first thought was: I_f Rika sees me now, I'm done for._

He was lying on a bed in some kind of wooden hut. A woman – a Palman woman - in a prison uniform with the sleeves hacked off to reveal several threatening tattoos was pointing a sword at his head. He recognised it as his own sword. He was chained to the bedpost. He saw several women lounging around the hut, all casual in the deadly way that predators often are.

"So, you're awake, Hunter." said the woman with the sword pointed at him.

"Please don't kill me." he said.

"Give me a reason not to." she said, tossing back her long blonde hair, "You want to do the same to me. There's a price on my head, isn't there? 'Fess up. I know everything that goes on in here."

"I th... think you've got the wrong person." said Chaz, "I'm here to break someone out."

"Don't wanna get out. I like it here. I'm top of the food chain."

"I don't think its you I'm looking for." he said.

"You're saying my Guild informant is lying to me?"

_Does everyone and their cat have a Guild informant? I wish I had one – maybe I could find out whether the Receptionist really is plotting to kill me!_ "Look, maybe there are two teams of Hunters on this Island, okay? I'm not here to hurt anyone. I could make it worth your while if you help me, the commission fee is quite large. I was hired by the chief of Uzo village!"

The entire room burst into hysterics.

"Father hired you idiots? You don't even know what your charges look like!"

"You mean YOU..." he stared at the woman.

"Be fair on the poor guy, Mel, you're a completely different person now than you were when you first came in!" said one of the other prisoners, "You were like a little mouse. All sweet and innocent."

"SHUT THE HELL UP!" she roared, swinging the sword around and pointing it at the woman who challenged her. She backed away. Mel turned and glared at Chaz again, "You moron, do you realise what you've done? You humiliated me in front of the gang! If I lose face, this gang loses its leader and the whole prison turns into hell! We're the only kind of order there is."

"What about the Warden?"

She laughed. "Ha, stupid moggy doesn't bother coming down here any more, it has bigger plans, nothing any of us can understand."

"Moggy?"

"Yeah, the cat." she said, "Haven't you met it? We assumed it was the one who got you into that mess. It likes dropping people into that goo."

"That cat's the Warden?" he asked. It explained a lot. Why nobody agreed on the Warden's gender – you couldn't really tell with cats unless you looked hard – why the cat moved around as freely as it did, why nobody challenged it, why it had its own moving platform system and an office. It was obvious, really. _Why am I logically justifying a cat being a prison Warden? _

"The Warden's a purestrain Musk Cat. Can trace his ancestors back to Myau, or something." she shrugged, "He rants on about it all the time."

"Oh, those." he vaguely remembered the Musk Cats, now. He had met a small colony of them on Dezolis and they had lent him an ancient relic in order to help him defeat the Profound Darkness. He had assumed they only lived on Dezolis, that the colony in the Mist Vale was the only surviving colony as they had told him it was. Now that he thought about it, it was easy for one group of cats not to know that another group of cats on a different planet existed, especially if they were hiding on a prison island.

I shouldn't be thinking about this, he told himself, there are other, more important things. Like persuading the psychotic prisoner with the sword not to kill me. And finding Rika...

"Did you say you had found me?"

She nodded, "Be grateful I kept you alive for as long as I did, moron."

"Did you see my partner?" he asked, "A woman about as tall as you, with purple hair and ears that look like horns. I think she may have fallen into the vat."

"If she fell in, she's done for." she shrugged, "Nobody's ever come out of that stuff alive except rats, and they always grow to giant size and then grow extra heads. Its supposed to turn us into bio-engineered killing machines."

"Well, if that's the case, I guess she'll be fine. She's already a bio-engin..."

"CHAAAAAAAAAAZ!"

Mel turned around again, then there was a crash as the door burst off its hinges and the two women guarding the door were thrown across the room. Rika walked in, claws extended and dripping with blood, her eyes blazing with murderous fury.

"Rika, don't kill that woman! She's the..." Chaz was cut off as Rika made a lunge for Mel. With surprising skill, the prisoner parried Rika's attack with the sword. The two women circled each other, their faces both twisted with animal rage. Chaz had been forgotten.

He knew he had to act fast or he would either lose his partner or drastically fail the mission in a way that would destroy his reputation with the Guild – nobody employed Hunters who murdered their charges. There was nothing he could use to pick the lock on his shackles but if he aimed carefully, he could use Brose to expand the chains enough for him to slip his wrists through. If Rika has turned homicidal, her opinions don't count, he decided, so I'm free to abuse techniques as often as I please.

He focussed his mental energy, putting all his effort into restricting the effects of the normally powerful technique to such a tight area. He was rewarded with the creak of metal straining itself. He freed his wrists, then released the technique, fighting off the mental exhaustion. He needed to cast more techniques. Without his sword, the only way he could break up the fight was to use Earth on one or more of them and pray that it worked.

"Chaz! Don't go near that woman!"

He turned around. Standing in the entrance to the hut was Rika.

"That's not me! That's Rika_First - my clone! The substance in the vat cloned me, and the clone's gone on a murderous rampage!"

"Huh?"

"Don't listen to her!" yelled the other Rika, fending off Mel's furious attacks, "She's the clone!"

Chaz scratched his head. They truly looked identical, down to the last mannerism. "Well, that Rika's trying to kill people, so... does that mean she's the evil clone?"

"I'm trying to kill the girl threatening my partner, idiot!" said the first Rika, "And she said I'm Rika_First. Nei_First was the original Nei... meaning I'm the original, not the clone!"

"I meant that you were evil, like Nei_First! Talk about taking metaphors too far!"

"Who's Nei_First?" asked Chaz.

"Aargh, don't you know ANY history?" she complained, "I'm, what, seven years old and I know more than y..."

"Ha! I'm six! Chaz, you know I'm six! Only a clone would get their age wrong!" said the first Rika.

"Women lie about their age all the time!" said the second.

"Won't you all just shut up, you wusses? I'm going to kill you both anyway, and your stupid boyfriend!" yelled Mel.

"HE IS NOT MY BOYFRIEND!" the Rikas both yelled at the same time. The first Rika broke off from her fight with Mel and they both glared at Chaz. He tried to back into a corner but the other prisoners were all hiding in the corners.

"L... Look, can't we just all go home together and split the pay three ways? Its still a lot of money!" said the Hunter.

_I'm afraid none of you will be going home, meow._

"Gah! Its the Warden!" yelled Mel. She frantically waved Chaz and the two Rikas into a corner. The prisoners began cleaning the place up, "We weren't fighting! Honest!"

"Warden! What have you done to Rika?" demanded Chaz, "Which is the real Rika?"

_Your judgement was correct. They are functionally identical, meow. _The cat walked through the door and sat down in front of Chaz, swishing its tail back and forth, _I'm intrigued the experiment worked, meow. So, the girls name is Rika. Does that mean you really are Chaz Ashley, the Protector?_

"You answer my question properly first, meo..." Chaz stopped himself, blushing at his momentary slip, "How do you know about my quest?"

_I am Myau Myausson the Third, meow. My ancestor was THE Myau. Because of my illustrious heritage, I was trained in all the ancient legends in case I was ever chosen as a Protector, although this never happened._

"Because you're evil?"

_Because I was given another, equally important task, meow, _the cat stood up and licked its paw, _Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go and complete that task. If you would care to follow me, I can assure you that Rika will be there, meow._

"The real Rika?"

_What is real when the Cycle of Legend is in so much flux, meow? t_he Warden turned around, looked at Mel, mewed at her, then walked out. Chaz walked out after the cat and was followed by Mel and the two Rikas.

"You're coming with me? I thought you didn't want to go back." he said.

"The Warden says my sister will be in trouble if I don't."

"I promise nothing bad will happen to her." said Chaz, "I was instructed to bring you both back safely to your father."

"Actually, I was worried she'd steal my kill again." said Mel, "She killed the ENTIRE last party of Hunters, didn't leave me a single one!"

"Another Rika is already on the peak of Mount Maruera." said the first Rika, "We must reach the peak ourselves if we wish to be there in time to ascend to our M-Rika form."

"Yes, and we will weaken as more doppelgangers are produced!"

Chaz shook his head and ignored the lunatics. The tip of the Warden's tail could just be seen poking out of a long patch of grass. This region lay outside the main prison building and appeared to contain a small group of huts. As they were so much more comfortable-looking than the cells, he guessed they were for the prisoners that had somehow managed to gain favour with the Warden, possibly by large amounts of bribery. He followed the Warden through a stout reinforced door set into the side of the mountain, which opened when the cat pressed a hidden switch. Behind the door, he discovered the prison graveyard.

"I really wish I wasn't right next to the crypt." commented Mel, "Makes me suspect I'm just here so its more convenient when the Warden finally finds an excuse to execute me."

Unlike the rest of the prison, the graveyard was in dire need of maintenance. The graves were overgrown and some of the tombstones were sinking or collapsing. Chaz tripped over the ruins of one grave and almost fell straight into the foul-smelling mire that he hoped was just a stagnant part of the marsh but really didn't want to find out one way or the other. The Warden gave him an irritable flick of his tail as he jumped from gravestone to gravestone with absolutely no respect for the dead. Chaz was glad when they finally crossed the crypt and climbed a winding stone staircase to the top of the mountain. His face cloth had been removed during his captivity and he could faintly smell the pollen of the hallucinogenic blue flowers. His mind reeled with vertigo as he emerged to find himself standing diagonally on some kind of floating silver clock tower in the middle of a giant topiary in the sky. By the time he had torn his jacket sleeve off to make another face cloth, managed to use Anti on himself despite the distorted static voices whispering at him to use Feeve and drawn his eyes away from the still-worrying precipitous drop, the Warden had walked to the cliff edge, where two tiny moving platforms were hovering, just out of safe jumping range. Upon one stood a terrified-looking woman who looked like Mel's twin.

"How dare you! You know how scared Meg is of heights!" yelled Mel.

_She's right to be scared, meow, humans never get that jump right._

"Where's Rika?" demanded Chaz, "You said she would be here!"

_She's obviously a little late, meow. I expect she hasn't discovered where in the room I concealed the Escapipe. It was designed to be a challenge to find, as well as being the only way out of the room. I had to make absolutely sure it was too enticing not to use. She doesn't have enough cat DNA, so dangling it on a string doesn't work._

"Escapipe? Only amateurs use Escapipes!"

_Chaz, do you know anything of this date, meow?_

"Pay day?" guessed Chaz.

_This, my mercenary friend, is the one thousandth anniversary of the famous Third Era Escapipe Incident._


	9. Mission 4, Part 4

"Escapipe... Incident?"

_You have been told of the cycle where Dark Force manifests every thousand years, yes? _

Chaz nodded. He remembered Le Roof talking about it.

_Very few people in Algol know this, but there was a period of one thousand years where Dark Force did not manifest. It is known as the Third Era, meow. What is even less well known is, Dark Force actually manifested outside Algol. He escaped onto one of the Palman world-ships that left the solar system and almost destroyed every single one of the fleet._

"Those poor refugees!"

The cat hissed at him, _Stupid soft-headed human! The ones who left Algol when they should have stayed on their homeland and died were the ones who doomed us all! Anyway, Rhys was the Protector who fought Dark Force and slew him during the Third Era. Or... that should have happened. _

"Dark Force won?"

_Much worse than that,_ the cat actually looked afraid, _You see, at the time, Prince Rhys was about to marry. His bride was kidnapped. He blamed it upon his enemies and demanded to start a war to retrieve his bride but his father threw him in the castle dungeon. Rhys... was supposed to be rescued by a certain person at a certain time. He actually used an Escapipe that he had somehow known to purchase. He was even seen to sell his weapons and armour in a haste to quickly obtain one before his wedding._

"Maybe he was nervous and wanted a way to escape from the wedding if he chickened out." said Chaz.

_Indeed. I understand nothing of non-Cat mating rituals. However, this is irrelevant. What you must understand is, Rhys was not supposed to use that Escapipe. His action was so... drastically against the flow of his destiny that it created a time paradox._

"Like if you go in the Edge without the Algo-Ring and your head explodes?"

_Think of it more as the entirety of time and space exploding, instead of your head. The entire Third Era cycle of fate was locked in an indefinite loop from which nobody on board the world-ship could ever escape. _

"Er... but the world's not ended!"

_This is only because the events happened so far away from Algol. The... consequences haven't had time to reach us. Yet. They are about to, Chaz, and I am about to manipulate the paradox by exactly reconstructing the situation in which it last happened. The wedding, the dungeon, the King's order... everything._

"Chaz, what's the Warden saying?"

"He says Rika and your sister are getting married and Rika's the husband." yelled Chaz, "And the world's going to explode."

_No, Chaz, the world will not explode. Algol will be saved from an even more terrible fate. What I am about to do... will make sure that the Fifth Era never happens._

"Oh... I think Rune said we stopped all that happening when we killed the Profound Darkness."

_The Fifth Era is another that will happen outside Algol._

"Well, that's okay, isn't it? The other world can deal with it! We can't really travel to other worlds anyway, so there's nothing we can even do about it."

_Chaz, you don't understand. The Cycle is Algol's destiny. It is everything important that happens on Algol. It can't help but come back and affect Algol. And by happening on such radically different worlds... in different circumstances... Algol will change, too. When the Fifth Era comes to Algol, it will be mutated beyond recognition! The only way to keep Algol safe... is to place it permanently in a closed loop. To take it permanently... I believe the term is 'offline'._

"A prison, you mean? You want to place Algol in a giant prison?" yelled Chaz.

_I hadn't really thought of it like that. Is it a prison if you keep something out rather than in? I suppose I really am the world's greatest Warden, then. _

"You're a nutcase!" said Chaz, "And I'd ask you to stop involving Rika in your stupid experiments!"

_Oh, but the experiment already works. The Rikas aren't clones, meow, they're doppelgangers. I've already created a tiny temporal paradox. In time, meow, it can probably produce infinite Rikas. What's more, the original Rika is about to use that Escapipe._

Chaz heard the familiar surging noise of someone using an Escapipe, which sounded the same as someone using Ryuka, except that it was magnified to the point that it was like being thrown into the ocean. Rika's form was slowly materialising on the left platform. Massive interference was distorting the signal, possibly from the paradox that hung thick in the air, so that she was having difficulty arriving. The half-projected imagine was twisted by crackling red static.

Chaz ran to Rika, standing on the Warden's tail in his haste, and threw himself towards her platform, jumping out into thin air.

"RYUKA!" he screamed.

Darkness. There was a sound like a glass jar cracking through being heated and then cooled too suddenly as he slammed into an invisible force field. It was a familiar pain. Teleport redirect. The thing that happened if you botched a Ryuka technique – for instance, by using Ryuka to teleport towards someone who is using Ryuka to teleport towards you. It hurt almost as much as the time Demi mistook him for an android and tried to repair him with a screwdriver. This was why it was only the second time he had ever made the mistake.

He was thrown backwards through the void, then dropped out of Ryuka-space, fell out of the sky and landed in the ocean.

The first thing he saw was a Hydrofoil steaming towards an island. Almost at its destination.

"Gryz, NO!" he began to scream but his mouth quickly filled up with salt water. He choked and spluttered. The shock to his system caused him to lose his battle to stay afloat and he began to be pulled under, into the icy cold water.

Something was swimming towards him. Failed teleports didn't usually redirect that far away, he remembered. He was probably still within range of the shark-infested part of the water.

He pulled together the last vestiges of his willpower in a desperate bid to form one more Ryuka technique. He thought of Gryz. Nothing mattered more right now than turning that boat around. He closed his eyes...

An image came to him for a brief fraction of a second. A young man around his own age, possibly a few years older. Chaz thought he vaguely recognised him, although he had no idea where from. His hair was bright blue and he wore some kind of white robe and white armour over a blue tunic. He waved his hands and shouted at Chaz, as if desperately prohibiting him from doing something. Then Chaz was hit by another teleport redirection.

When he woke up again, he was in Aiedo's inn. Rika stood over him. As he started awake, she screamed and tried to hide behind her back the bucket of cold water she was about to throw on him.

"Chaz, I know the beds are comfy and warm in the inn, but please don't fall asleep on missions!" she begged, "Its so embarassing!"

"Um... mission?" he scratched his head.

"Oh, don't tell me you forgot!" she sighed.

"I had a pretty bad nightmare." he said, "We were in prison. Then the world exploded."

"I would feel more sympathetic with you if you hadn't been sleeping on the job!" she folded her arms, "I'll tell you once more. We're helping the village chief of Uzo find his daughters."

"Huh? But that was... exactly like my dream..."

"Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but there are no prisons or worlds exploding involved. They were freeloading at the inn again, so the innkeeper decided to make them work off their debt. They only have six months left."

"We have to wait SIX MONTHS until we get paid?" he groaned, "Rika, we'll starve to death in six months! We don't have enough money to even last us out the week!"

"In that case, you'll just have to find some more work." she said, "I've been hired to keep watch so they don't try and run off again, so you'll have to go to the Guild yourself."

"Rika... did you have any weird dreams?"

"I explained this to you before, Chaz. Numans only sleep once every five days, and when they do, they only have to enter REM sleep once every..."

Chaz sighed and walked out before he was made to endure an entire Numan biology lecture. He would almost – ALMOST – rather face the Receptionist again. However, he had another little task to do.

He was going to sell the party's ENTIRE stock of Escapipes. Sell, or possibly destroy, just in case.


	10. Mission 5: Chaz's Little Apprentice

Mission 5: Chaz's Little Apprentice

"Chaz, the Guildmaster would like a word with you in private."

"Huh?" he blinked, "We have a Guildmaster?"

"Of course we have a Guildmaster." replied the Secretary, "We're a Guild."

"Th... that sort of makes sense..." admitted Chaz, "But I've never seen him before. I've never even heard of him before!"

"That's because the Hunters who get sent up to the Guildmaster's office never return! Don't you know that?" she gave him her best patronising secretarial smile which he hoped meant she was joking, "I take it you need help finding the office, then. Honestly, I thought everyone knew about the Guildmaster. Fancy a Hunter of your experience not having found out yet!"

Chaz was at first paranoid about the mysterious and reclusive Guildmaster but was now more paranoid about everyone else in the Guild knowing about the Guildmaster but him. Had they been keeping it a secret from him all this time so that they could laugh at him for his ignorance? What would this Guildmaster turn out to be like anyway? His first thought, for some bizarre reason, was that he would walk in to find a Telepathy Ball like Lutz's on a table in the middle of the room. How was Rune doing anyway? He hadn't heard a word from him since he had wandered off into the Motavian desert that day, claiming that he still had more training before he became fully worthy of the title of Lutz. Then he imagined that the Guildmaster was an AI, like SEED's enterprising little cousin. He hadn't seen Wren either but he didn't suppose he ever would. The android wasn't the type of person for surprise visits to his friends, especially as he would have to fly a spaceship all the way from Zelan Space Station to Motavia.

The receptionist lowered the barrier so that he could walk behind the counter, then took a pole with a curved hook on the end that looked a little like a window opener and used it to pull open a trapdoor on the ceiling. Chaz took the opportunity to look at the desk to see if the receptionist really was withholding all the best jobs but she had already locked away all her paperwork in her impenetrable shield wall of filing cabinets. He didn't suppose that there was actually anyone she would reserve the jobs for. There wasn't a single person in the Guild she liked.

The trapdoor led up to a whole level of the Guildhall that Chaz hadn't been aware even existed. It was mostly administrative. The busy secretaries didn't even bother looking up from their ledgers to acknowledge Chaz and the receptionist. Chaz wasn't aware the Guild required that much paperwork to be done. He was aware that his work wasn't always as straightforward as just killing the monsters – in fact, the Guild seemed to go out of its way to find him the most complicated missions possible – but this was ridiculous. Trees were still sparse in Motavia. They shouldn't be wasting paper on this much bureaucracy.

At the end of the dusty corridor was a much sturdier looking door with a brass nameplate that said 'Guildmaster'. The receptionist knocked once, then pushed the door open and walked in. Chaz was greeted by the sight of an impressively large desk made of solid Laerma wood, above which hung the Hunter's Guild symbol, along with several skulls of different Biomonsters, a collection of weapons and a detailed map of Motavia. Behind the desk was a sandworm-leather executive swivel chair and on the desk was a paperweight made of Laconia.

"One moment, please, I'll just fetch the Guildmaster!" said the receptionist. Then she disappeared through a side entrance. Chaz sat on one of the smaller seats at the back of the room. A few minutes later, the receptionist re-emerged, now wearing a black Hunter's uniform with silver brocades. She settled down on the Guildmaster's chair and crossed her legs. While it was obvious to Chaz that it was the same person, she had done a good job of transforming herself into a figure of authority. The aura of command around her was palpable. Her trademark condescending smile was now a porcelain mask of impartiality as if she cared not for the trivial business of mortals.

"Ah, hello, Chaz Ashley, I'm glad you could see me at such short notice." she said in a slightly different accent.

"What the... YOU'RE...?"

"The Guildmaster, yes. All the rumours that I secretly manipulate the affairs of the entire Guild are true. Except its not secret. The Guild hasn't been able to afford a separate receptionist and Guildmaster for years. We're emerging from an Apocalypse. You can't expect the economy to recover straight away."

"Er... so... why did you want to see me... ma'am?"

"I've been watching your performance during missions for a long time now, Chaz Ashley, and I'm impressed. For such a young Hunter to have achieved so much hasn't been seen since Alys Brangwyn, may her soul rest in peace." Chaz wished people would stop reminding him of the grief he was still trying to get over, "Ahem. That's why I'm giving you a promotion."

"Promotion?"

"You're now a senior Guild member. I'm giving you the authority to start training your own apprentices."

"Me? Train apprentices?" It didn't feel right. He still remembered being an apprentice himself. He imagined he was probably the same age as Alys was when she first started accepting trainees, except that Alys had never admitted how old she was. He didn't get women at all. Why did it matter? She wasn't even particularly old! Wren was 999 years old, for crying out loud!

"Now that its actually possible to reach Aiedo without dying, we have a constant influx of young people wishing to train as Hunters. I'm going to assign one of them to you." said the Guildmaster/receptionist, "You're due to meet Mr. Culvers in the front reception in two hours. Oh, and Chaz? Never tell anyone my true identity."

"Yes, ma'am!" he saluted.

"You are dismissed." she told him. Then, like a switch being turned off, she changed her accent again, "Do you need showing back to the reception desk?"

"Yes please." he was a little worried the paperwork would eat him. Nothing in the Guild was safe if SHE was really in charge.

* * *

He thought he had heard the name 'Culvers' before. Now he saw the young man, he remembered it clearly. He didn't look much different. A yellow tunic and trousers, dark brown hair, an impressionable face that warned Chaz that he had to be careful what he said or the boy would believe it pretty much whatever it was.

"Chaz! Its really Chaz Ashley!" he said, his eyes lighting up.

"You're the boy with the plastic sword, right?"

"That's right! The Sword of Alis! I knew you'd remember! Alis came to me in a vision and told me so!"

"I see you two know each other already." said the receptionist/Guildmaster, who had reverted entirely to her primary personality, "I won't need to introduce you, then. But I will anyway. Otherwise I won't be following procedure. Chaz Ashley, this is Ryan Culvers. Ryan Culvers, Chaz Ashley. He's the senior Hunter who will be monitoring you during your apprenticeship period."

"So, you decided to join the Hunter's Guild?" asked Chaz.

"At first I thought about joining the Church of Alis in Termi. Then I couldn't remember where Termi was and I ended up in Aiedo. Its hard enough just getting a raft from Torinco to the mainland. I was about to use the money I had left over to hire a Hunter to guide me to Termi when I realised that I was taking the wrong path in life. Alis wouldn't have cloistered herself away in a temple somewhere, she would have been out there on the front lines, saving people from evil monsters!"

"I see."

"I've been practising with my sword every day like you told me to!" he said, "Do you want me to show you?"

"Um... maybe in a less crowded area?"

"Chaz is going to guide you through a training mission." said the receptionist.

"My first mission? Wow!"

"Its only a very basic mission I picked out because of its suitability for apprentices, and Chaz will be on hand to support you if you get into any difficulty. You will treat him with respect as a senior Hunter at all times. Chaz, you mustn't let him wander off. If you get any of our apprentices killed, you will be required to pay a fee out of your own wages."

"Of course I wouldn't disrespect Chaz! He's the Paladin of Alis!" said Ryan.

"I'm the what?"

"Paladin of Alis." repeated the receptionist, "Paladin. As in 'Paradin Blow'."

"Okay, what's this mission?" Chaz prayed to Alis that it was something actually suitable for an apprentice, or at least something not designed to get him killed, instead of a mission like the last one, which had almost destroyed his local space-time continuum.

"We need someone to go and clear out the biomonsters underneath Piata Academy again." she said, "Report to the Headmaster at Piata. He adds 'don't interrupt the exams going on in the eastern wing of the building and don't open any cupboards marked 'Highly Radioactive''."

"Will do." Chaz nodded. The mission sounded genuinely straightforward. Clearing out the basement was something every Hunter did for some spare cash. Every time the Academy found out who was creating the biomonsters and expelled them, another student immediately took their place. Fortunately, none of the students seemed to know how to create particularly strong biomonsters, or else the technology they were using wasn't very effective. The Hunters never entirely got rid of the problem but they always had it under control for now.

"We're going to be slaying real biomonsters!" said Ryan happily.

"Um... where are you sleeping? I need to go home and prepare now. You should get your equipment too." said Chaz, "Is it okay for Rika to be involved in this?"

"Of course, although it is advisable not to take a large party, so that your apprentice has at least some kind of role in the battle." said the receptionist, "He's staying with you. Do you expect him to go all the way back to Torinco? You're supposed to buy his equipment for him, by the way, he hasn't been trained in what equipment to buy yet."

"Oh..." Chaz wasn't sure what Rika would have to say about a stranger coming to stay with them. She might start becoming paranoid that he would make a mess. She was just as obsessive about keeping everything neat as Alys had been.

As it happened, Rika was quite keen on the idea.

* * *

"He's such a cute little boy!" squealed Rika, embracing Chaz's unfortunate apprentice. He could tell how uncomfortable Ryan was by the look on his face and the way he looked desperately around for a way to escape, "We're like a family! What a brilliant idea, taking on a trainee!"

"Believe me, it wasn't my idea." said Chaz, "And that 'little boy' is technically three times your age."

"Do you need a hand with anything? You can have Chaz's room. He's used to sleeping in uncomfortable places so he'll be fine on the sofa." Rika told the boy, ignoring Chaz's protests.

"I'll be fine. I don't want to intrude on the saviours of Algol!" said Ryan, gazing around the room, "This doesn't look like a hero's house. Where are the souvenirs of all your adventures?"

"Saviour? Hero? Chaz, what have you been telling him?"

"This is nothing to do with me! I just told you!" insisted Chaz. He took his boots off and flopped onto the sofa. He had only been in the Guildhouse talking to the receptionist but he felt as though he'd spent all day working. That was the effect she had on him.

"Listen, Ryan. Chaz isn't a hero. Nor is he very dependable." Rika told him, "You have to keep an eye out for yourself. Don't just assume he knows what he's doing."

"Aren't you coming as well? Chaz said you would be coming!"

"You can't go basement clearing on your own?"

"If we do happen to find the technology they're using to generate these biomonsters, you'll be the most likely to know how to operate it." said Chaz.

"I suppose so." said Rika, staring at the mirror, a sad look on her face, "I miss SEED."

"Oh, I'm sorry." said Chaz, "I miss Alys too."

"Its sad when valiant heroes die in battle." said Ryan, "But it has to happen. It always happens in the ancient sagas. That means they'll be immortalised and their deaths will not be in vain. It makes the story better when that happens."

"Chaz, why don't you go and help Ryan buy some equipment? I'll unpack the bags and sort us out some lunch." said Rika, "Buy some Trimate, we're clean out. Its high time you bought some Escapipes."

"No Escapipes." said Chaz firmly. Making sure that Ryan was actually following him, he walked out of the door and closed it carefully behind him.

"I had a bad experience with an Escapipe." he explained to his apprentice.


	11. Mission 5: Chaz's Little Apprentice 2

_((Gah, sorry I never update this! I fail at updating things ~ Exile-Chan))_

"What's that?" asked Ryan.

"Its an Infantworm. Don't poke it!"

Chaz bought Ryan a pair of daggers. He never went near the shop's Slicer Department any more. It was one of the many things in the town that reminded him too much of Alys. He promised to teach the boy how to use a sword once he had built up some strength and showed himself to be skilled at wielding smaller blades. So far, all Ryan had done was poke everything in sight with the daggers, including several sleeping Biomonsters and one unexploded Floatmine, or yell 'what's that?' at the top of his voice at the precise moment Rika was about to sneak up on something. Those two words were something Chaz had begun to dread hearing. It was a long walk from Aiedo to Piata anyway, without some kind of apprentice-related near-death experience every other step of the way. Due to the Biomonster outbreak, the Principal of the Motavia Academy had put the entire town under lockdown again, which included an anti-technique field being constructed around the town walls. Chaz couldn't Ryuka in or out. He had found this out the hard way when he slammed into the field and was forcibly jolted back into the space he tried to teleport from, which felt like being dragged backwards from Piata to Aiedo. This was just the sort of thing that the Receptionist/Guildmaster was supposed to tell him but conveniently forgot. It was good training experience for Ryan and sheer torture for Chaz. At least Rika seemed to be enjoying herself.

"What's tha..."

"Another Infantworm."

"Why are there twenty of them?"

Chaz looked up, a little worried by the news. In order to preserve his sanity, he had grown to only half pay attention to anything his apprentice said. This turn of events was something that he really should take notice of. He had been staring at the ground, his mind on the road ahead and his desperate wish to be further along it. It was bad practice for a Hunter not to pay attention to his surroundings. Now they were surrounded by juvenile Sandworms. They were still quite small, too young to be interested in attacking him, but this brought the even bigger danger that there might be an overprotective mother Sandworm the size of Kadary Temple lurking somewhere nearby.

"It must be Sandworm egg-laying season."

"What does a Sandworm egg look like?"

"Bright yellow, gelatinous, about the size of a melon."

"Oh, you mean like that thing?"

"DON'T TOUCH THAT!" screamed Chaz, running to pull his apprentice back. It was too late. The Sandworm egg had already been poked. He grabbed the boy anyway and started walking at a much faster pace away from the clutch of eggs and the hatchlings that wove in and out of the sand.

"What's that rumbling sound?" asked Ryan, just as the entire sand dune behind them exploded and a solid mass of chitin rose from the ground like the Lord of the Underworld. It opened its maw to show them its hundreds of teeth, the size and sharpness of swords. Chaz ran, dragging the boy behind him.

"What's that?" asked Ryan, pointing at the Sandworm.

"Its the end of the world." said Chaz.

"Piata's not far!" reported Rika, "We get to civilisation and we're safe!"

Chaz wondered how safe they would really be if a Sandworm ever decided to make a really determined effort to break into a city. The guards on the gates were generally some of the better Hunters but even the most seasoned Hunters didn't try to take on Sandworms without an entire raiding party. If they ever decided to make a mass migration or something... Fortunately, Sandworms were solitary animals and required so much space that they immediately fought each other if one worm even caught sight of another.

Unwilling to stray too far from its nest, the Sandworm lost interest before Chaz reached the gates of Piata. His leg muscles felt like they were on fire and his heart like it was about to explode. He collapsed onto a bench next to the fountain in the Town Square while Rika healed him and Ryan asked the scholars endless questions. Many of them were running to help the gate guards ensure that the Sandworm was definitely gone, having been taught a few martial Techniques as a mandatory part of the Academy's training regime for students of every disciple, but a couple of archaeologists stopped to talk to him. They were the type of students that enjoyed ranting on about their subject even more than Ryan loved asking them questions. Once Chaz felt ready to move again and was satisfied that the Sandworm was gone, he led them to the Academy main building and up the stairs to the Principal's Office.

"Be careful not to get lost." Rika told Ryan, "Chaz lost his way in the Academy all the time."

"It only happened once!" Chaz protested.

They reported to the Principal, a process that had grown to become a simple bureaucratic procedure. He already knew the house rules and didn't need to be shown his way into the basement.

"Now, the first monster we meet is likely to be the Xanafalgue." said Chaz, "They're very common because they're easy to genetically engineer and even the freshers can overpower them when they lose control of them, so they're the first thing the students learn how to make whenever they get it into their heads to create monsters. Their weak spot is... well... anywhere, my advice is just to hit them."

He was annoyed that the basement was still dark and dusty. The carpet was mouldy and the sagging bookshelves were full of obsolete textbooks that had been left to rot. It was so widely used that Chaz was beginning to wonder if the Guild rumours were true and the Academy were actually teaching all the students how to create Biomonsters as a compulsory course module, yet they didn't have the common courtesy to fit some new lightbulbs, give the place a clean every now and then or at least tidy up their library archiving system.

"Is that a Zan..."

"A Xanafalgue, yes. Don't just stand there pointing at it! Chase it down!"

"I shall smite thee in the name of Alis, unholy monster!" yelled the apprentice, running down the stairs after the rapidly retreating Biomonster and swinging his daggers around like an escaped lunatic. Chaz sighed and followed him.

"Chaz! Chaz, I can't find it!" he screamed at the top of his voice.

"It won't be far. This basement isn't that big." said Chaz, "Be quiet and follow me, I'll trap it in a corner for you."

"What's that?" asked Ryan, pointing at something behind them.

"I said be quiet. Its a dog." said Chaz. Then he stopped and looked over his shoulder again.

Their eyes flashing in the darkness, he made out hundreds of tiny, fat canine shapes. They watched him, occasionally blinking. Then one of them barked.

"Okay, we're going to back away very slowly. No talking. No poking anything." he whispered, "Rika, can we get around the other side?"

"It looks safe but I can't really see around the corner." she whispered back.

"We'll have to take the chance." said Chaz, "Follow Rika, I'll take the rear."

The clones slowly advanced down the corridor after the party. They didn't make any hostile moves but there was a hungry look in their eyes and they never took their gaze off the Hunters. Chaz drew his sword and he heard Rika bare her slicers. After a few minutes of careful retreat, they heard more barking, this time from the other direction.

"Are we surrounded?" whispered Chaz.

"Looks like it."

"Is this a Heroic Last Stand?" asked Ryan enthusiastically.

"I don't intend to die here." said Chaz, "Keep walking. Try not to show fear or look in any way like you have cake."

"Chaz! Don't say the 'c' word! Rocky understood the 'c' word!" whispered Rika, horrified.

There was a low growl and one of the dogs lunged out of the shadows. Then it yelped and dropped to the floor as though it had been switched off. Chaz saw a flicker of light, blacker than the darkness, which contracted into a tiny dot and disappeared. Terrified whines echoed through the crowd of dogs and they moved back.

"Over here! They don't know how to get through here!"

Chaz jumped back. One of the bookcases had been moved to one side, revealing a hidden door. Hahn stood in the doorway, his hand still outstretched, radiating technique-energy.

"Did you just use Vol on a dog?" asked Rika.

"Its okay, I know Rever. Get inside before you let any in!"

They ran through the door and Hahn dragged the bookcase back in front of it and then closed it again.

"What's happening?" asked Ryan.

"The end of the world." said Chaz.

"The other End of the World looked more impressive."

"Appearances can be deceiving." his tutor told him, "I can't believe Tinkerbell managed to clone them. I thought you were supposed to be stopping her!"

"I tried, but she kept moving her laboratory. I only just discovered that all these secrets doors existed. The true structure of the Basement is like a rabbit warren." said Hahn, "She has stronger Biomonsters guarding the place than just the usual ones."

"Do we have any chance left of stopping her?"

"We're in luck. Tinkerbell happened to perfect her technique during the busiest week of the exam period. She can't unleash her clone army on the hapless population and pass her exams at the same time. While she's busy revising, I've been infiltrating her laboratory. She has a two-hour exam in half an hour." said Hahn, "I know how to stop the machine, now. I think I can get everyone inside and stop the machine in the time we have, if you Hunters guard me while I work. However, it is her last exam of the term. That makes it our last chance."

"Its better than nothing." said Chaz.

"I'm glad you guys responded to my summons. It took me a lot to persuade the Principal to ask for you in person and not ask me awkward questions. Think how ironic it would be if an exam saved the world!" said Hahn, "By the way, who's your new companion?"

"I'm Ryan Culvers, apprentice Paladin of Alis!"

"Oh, you have an apprentice? You must be a very respected Hunter by now. I was offered a teaching position but I turned it down." said Hahn, "Saya yelled at me for it. She doesn't understand. I'm not the type of person who can sit and teach other people the old facts when there are new discoveries to be made and new problems to solve."

"The Guildmaster didn't give me much choice." said Chaz.

"We're enjoying it really!" said Rika, "He's just saying that to be modest."

"Are we going to save the world now?"

"Yes, Ryan, we're going to save the world." Chaz told him, "Lead the way, Hahn."

The scientist pushed a certain spot in the middle of the carpet and a panel on the far wall rumbled and slid away, revealing another hidden door. Chaz heard growling and scratching at the previous door. He didn't stop watching it until they moved out of earshot.


	12. Mission 5: Chaz's Little Apprentice 3

Either Tinkerbell had been working on projects other than the Rocky cloning operation, or some of her earlier prototypes had gone horribly wrong. Either way, they were attacked by a pack of Biomonsters before they had even made it down the first corridor. They looked like adaptations of the Xanafalgue but taller, with more heads and a lot more tentacles and teeth. It was nothing that Chaz, Rika and Hahn couldn't handle between them. Chaz sliced at the heads, distracting them while Rika sprung at them from behind, while Hahn supported them from a distance with the occasional well-aimed Nawat technique. The Hunter was pleased to see that Ryan was managing to land a few blows as well. He wasn't actually a bad fighter, as long as he was watched at all times and given clear orders to follow. He was quick, agile and very enthusiastic. Unfortunately for the rest of the party, 'enthusiastic' tended to mean 'suicidal'.

They followed the trail of the Biomonsters until they found the laboratory where they were created. It was full of vats connected up to life support equipment, some containing Biomonsters in various stages of development, some of them broken. Chaz wondered why the students could create their own life forms but still couldn't invent vats that didn't break as soon as the monsters grew to full size. Maybe they were supposed to break, like an egg shell, so that the monsters could escape into the wilds of the University basement and survive by devouring weaker Biomonsters, Hunters, janitors and first year students. There was probably an end-of-semester exam that you could only pass if your monster was still alive. If there wasn't an actual monster breeding course, then it was probably the most popular extra-curricular activity in the University after the rowing team.

"Um... I'm fairly sure the University isn't really encouraging the students to produce them on purpose..."

"Because the Principal would never lie about such a thing, and in fact, never has done!" Chaz pointed out.

"That's exactly why he wouldn't do it again. The Guild is monitoring him too closely."

"Take my advice. Never trust the Guild administration." said Chaz.

"I almost feel glad that someone is making use of the technology from Birth Valley." said Rika, "It would be a shame if SEED's purpose completely died from the planet. At some point, one of these students is going to accidentally create something useful and beneficial to humanity."

"What are those?" asked Ryan, pointing to a cage that was suspiciously smaller than the others. Chaz pulled him back before he could try and poke anything through the bars of the cage. Two baleful red eyes glared back at him and a row of sharp teeth glinted as the creature hissed, a sound that reminded Chaz of Dark Force in its utter primal malevolence, as if it possessed a loathing towards the entire Universe.

"Rabbits." said Hahn.

Apart from the Xanafalgue-things and the rabbits, there were also plant-based Biomonsters and some kind of giant fly, but there were no Rocky clones. There weren't even the usual signs of devastation that accompanied Rocky clones. The Hunters followed Hahn down a corridor full of similar laboratories. At the end of the corridor, there was a door with an electronic lock on it. Hahn had found out the password during his previous investigation. He keyed it in, then turned to the others.

"We're coming close to the cloning lab," warned Hahn, "The security is tighter here because its more dangerous. Tinkerbell isn't stupid. Insane, but not stupid."

"We're prepared for anything!" declared Ryan. Chaz didn't feel as confident but he was not about to look less brave than his apprentice in front of Rika.

Hahn shrugged, hit the button to release the door mechanism and stood back as it beeped and swished open. It closed and locked behind them when they stepped through. The lights had been turned down apart from a blue light that flashed on and off, the service light for some piece of machinery that was running low on power. They followed the lights, wary of the shadows that flitted in and out of view. Ryan almost mistook Rika's head for a pouncing Biomonster in the gloom. At the end of the long, featureless security corridor, they came to another locked door. Hahn opened it for them and they stepped into a chamber that looked as large as the rest of the laboratory combined. Chaz couldn't even see the ceiling.

"See, there's no way the Academy can't have noticed a room this bi..." began Chaz. Rika shushed him.

"They're here." she whispered, "All around us. I can smell their scent."

The lights flickered on for a few seconds and Chaz saw it. Every wall was covered in glass cylinders. Inside each one, asleep, was a small overweight dog.

* * *

"The Control Tower is over there." Hahn told them, pointing to a cylindrical chamber in the exact middle of the room, "We should be able to shut down the machinery all at once."

"Will that kill all the existing clones?" asked Rika, "I almost feel bad about doing this."

"Don't sympathise with the enemy, or you've already lost the battle." said Chaz, "This is Rocky we're talking about. It looks so cute and innocent to lull you into a false sense of security. How do you think it persuaded Tinkerbell to make clones of it?"

"We're wasting time by arguing. Tinkerbell will be on the last question of her exam by now." said Hahn, "Now I wish she'd won her claim for extra time in exams due to murderous psychotic tendencies."

At the top of the tower were bullet proof windows to view every corner of the room. The tower itself was heavily armoured and had a more complicated security lock with a voice recognition system. Hahn had recorded Tinkerbell's voice as part of his preparations. A platform led them to the top of the tower, where the security terminals and control panels were kept. On the floor was a dog basket, where another Rocky was curled, snoring contentedly. Chaz could tell that it was the original. It may have been older and slower but it radiated a stronger aura of evil. Hahn first switched the lights on properly so he could see what he was doing, then began entering the commands to override the cloning process. Meanwhile, Chaz watched the terminals on one side of the room while Rika watched the other. Even though he had seen it done several times before, Hahn still struggled to understand the system's interface. Tinkerbell had programmed it herself, he explained, and her mind did not work like that of an ordinary human being who had not been driven mad long ago by the most annoying dog in the solar system. After a few minutes, Chaz realised he could no longer see what Ryan was doing. Losing sight of the apprentice was usually a bad mistake, so he stepped back to make sure he wasn't about to press any buttons, pull any levers or poke any sleeping dogs. As he moved his foot, he heard a loud squeak. In the silence, it sounded like a sandworm's roar.

He almost jumped ten feet in the air, then hit his head on the ceiling. Stumbling backwards, he did something that made the squeaking noise again, before bumping into Rika. He looked down to discover that he had accidentally stepped on a plastic chew toy.

The dog opened one eye and gave an inquisitive whine. Then, far too quickly for its age, it sprang to all fours, darted over to the console and jumped into Hahn's lap. Balancing on the keyboard, it jumped up and licked his face. It pressed a key with its back paws, which went 'beep', causing the dog to jump and whirl around to face the terminal. It growled and barked at it, then pulled out the control key with its teeth. Hahn screamed and made a grab for the dog, which jumped off the panel before he could reach it and ran over to the platform, which descended, carrying the dog with it.

"That's your fault! Go and catch the dog!" yelled Rika, shoving Chaz down the hole before the platform could return. He hit the ground running, his sword already out. It was then that he discovered which button the dog had pressed.

The capsules were all opening at once. Clones had begun pouring out of them.

Rocky was so excited to see all his new identical twin brothers that he ran around in random directions, barking like a maniac. The rest of the dogs responded in kind. Soon, the entire floor was swarming with hyperactive dogs, all alike. Chaz couldn't see the original any more. He could barely prevent himself from being tripped up.

"SAVOL!" screamed Hahn, but Chaz stopped him before he could actually unleash the technique.

"They're not hostile yet! Don't give them a reason to attack! We can't win!"

"What do we do, then? Its like looking for a... a dog with a key in the middle of a big pile of dogs! Tinkerbell will be on her way back by now!"

"I'm already back!"

They all went silent. The original Rocky appeared from the middle of the pack, wagging his tail and running to greet his owner with loud barks. The clones all copied him.

"I told you I'd finish my exam early. You owe me five thousand Meseta." Tinkerbell told Hahn.


	13. Mission 5: Chaz's Little Apprentice 4

Chaz hadn't actually seen Tinkerbell before now. She had grown tall and slim. Her auburn hair was cropped to sensible length just below her ears. She was wearing a labcoat with an assortment of different pens in the pocket and one behind her ear.

"What have you been doing in my laboratory?" she demanded, "How did you even get in? You've ruined an entire batch! These clones aren't supposed to be released yet! I was still fine tuning their DNA! I'm afraid I'm going to have to charge you another ten thousand Meseta for the cleanup fee."

"I can't pay you this week, Tinkerbell. I spent my entire allowance on Hunter's Guild fees again." said Hahn.

"Why do you do this to yourself all the time? Is there nobody you don't owe money to? What on Earth would you even hire a Hunter for anyway? If there's a burglar, just use Vol on them!"she put her hands on her hips.

"You know why, Tinkerbell. I told you already I can't let you carry on with these experiments. You're endangering the entire world." said Hahn, "You can see for yourself what even one of these dogs can do."

"You're blaming the dog for this incident? Hmph, you're just trying to get out of paying again." said Tinkerbell, "I can't believe you'd stoop so low as to hire Hunters to ruin my life's work!"

"Aren't there better applications of your obvious scientific genius than immortalising a dog?"

"What would you know, you murderer? My dog is my childhood friend and faithful companion! For his service to me, he deserves no less than immortality!"

"Then why not work on life extension for him?" asked Hahn, "At the very least, the med students would be happy to teach you to use Rever!"

"Rocky doesn't want to live on as some kind of withering husk! He will be reborn anew through his clones, as a younger and stronger Rocky – the new, improved generation!"

"Wouldn't it be easier to let him breed with other dogs like a normal dog would?"

"To tell the truth, I already tried that but he's too overweight. I don't think other dogs are even attracted to him."

"Then put it on a diet!" suggested Rika.

"Have you ever tried getting this dog to do anything he doesn't want to do?"

"Maybe if you explained to it nicely that it needs to get into shape if its ever going to find a mate?"

"Would you react well if someone told you that?"

"Well, no, I'd claw their face off, but..."

"Exactly! Plus, there is no better way to ensure the purity of the Rocky bloodline than to use clones!" said Tinkerbell, reaching into her labcoat pocket, "You will see for yourself the danger of opposing me, Hahn and your murderous crew of mercenaries!"

"Hey, I'm not a... NO! NOT THAT!"

The biologist's only response was a deranged cackle as she unscrewed the top of some kind of hermetic capsule and threw the contents into the air. The dogs were already scrambling over each other to be the first to reach the shortcake. They growled and snapped, their mood turned serious now there was food at stake. A few of them were already beginning to look at Chaz as though they were waiting for him to make any move at all that could possibly be interpreted as an attempt to steal the food. They were ready and waiting. They would tear him apart. The Hunter drew his sword. He heard Hahn begin the ritual for his Savol technique again.

Suddenly, at the same time as the first dog pounced, there was a high-pitched whine and an intense burst of red light. A laser beam flashed down in an arc from one side of the room to the other, almost hitting Chaz. It vaporised everything in its path and left a deep smouldering crater in the floor where it hit.

"Oops!" yelled Ryan over the Control Tower intercom, "I think I pressed the wrong button!"

"Stop playing with the security controls!" screamed Tinkerbell, "You'll get me in trouble with the porters!"

"Sorry! What does the shutting down button look like again, Chaz?"

"It won't work without the control key!" Hahn yelled up at him, "Just keep providing covering fire until we can find it!"

"You lost my key?" Tinkerbell glared at him.

"I told you already, your dog did it!"

"Two hundred thousand Meseta!" she snapped.

"Have mercy..." he threw himself out of the way just in time as another laser bolt swept towards him. It hit one of the life support systems, sending up a shower of sparks, which caught fire.

"Sorry again!" yelled Ryan.

"Go and help him, Chaz!" said Rika, pushing him towards the Control Tower. One of the dogs tried to use the momentary distraction to pounce on her, but she whirled around and swiped at it with her slicers, sending it yelping away.

Suddenly, the room went dark again and the service lights began flashing red. An alarm sounded. Several of the dogs howled along to the noise.

"What did you just press?" yelled Tinkerbell.

"The button with 'Override' written above it!" Ryan yelled back.

"Written ABOVE it? The labels are written BELOW the buttons!"

"Oops, sorry! You should make it easier to understand, you know, that's kind of confusing." said Ryan, "Then, the button with 'Self-Destruct' written below it."

"You moron!" yelled Tinkerbell, "Everyone run!"

Chaz didn't need to be told. He jumped onto the platform, grabbed Ryan, checked that Rika was behind him, then used Hinas. The teleport shield bounced him straight off the spot just behind the front gates of Piata, sending him flying into the fountain, but at least they were all out of the room. Rika pulled him out of the water just in time to hear a loud explosion. The porters spilled out of their office, a building separate from the main wing, some of them carrying buckets of sand to put out the fire.

"Oh, wow, the building's intact." said Rika, "I was expecting the whole thing to go down if the basement exploded underneath it!"

"We explosion-proofed it decades ago. There are scientists working in that building, so we expect a few accidents every now and then." explained Hahn.

"Will the lady be okay?" asked Ryan.

"Tinkerbell? She's survived countless lab accidents. All of them were her fault. Of course, she blamed them all on me." said Hahn, "I'm more worried about how many of the clones survived. The equipment won't have survived but she might be able to rebuild if she has enough samples."

"Want us to go and check?" asked Ryan.

"Its okay." said Hahn, "Its going to be near impossible to track her down again. She could have gone anywhere, it won't be safe to go back in the basement and there'll be porters everywhere getting in the way. What's important is that she won't be able to set up again for a long time. That'll give me time to think up a permanent solution. Maybe some kind of anti-Rocky serum."

"Well, if you need us again, you know where to find us." said Rika.

"Come on, Ryan, let's go home." said Chaz.

"Did we win?" asked Ryan.

"Yes, we won." he replied, "Its a little hard to believe, but we actually successfully completed a mission."

* * *

"You're doing WHAT?"

"I'm awarding the commission fee to Ryan." she said, "He played the largest part in the mission. Not only did he originally spot the anomaly in the mission in the first place, his foresight saved your life twice and resulted in the successful completion of the mission despite the odds. He also detected and forewarned the Piata gate guards of a sandworm attack!"

"I..." Chaz spluttered.

"Its Guild regulations, Chaz! You can't blame the receptionist for the Guildmaster's decisions!"

"... what did you say happens to me if I leave the Guild again?"

"Nothing, do we look like the kind of barbarians who pressurise freelancers to join?" said the receptionist, "But we can't ensure your protection either, if you leave the Guild. You know how dangerous this line of work can be!"

"Don't worry, Chaz, I'll share out the money equally!" said Ryan, "And I won't let anyone have any money until we've spent most of it on responsible things like supplies! We're not the kind of Hunters who squander money on luxuries!"

"At least we saved the world." said Rika, "And we got to go on a mission with Hahn again. We've been meeting up with lots of old friends lately. They all seem to be keeping themselves well."

"My first mission was fun!" said Ryan, "I hope the next one goes as well! Chaz is an awesome teacher!"

"Please return again to the Hunter's Guild, where we enrich the lives of Hunters!" said the receptionist


	14. Mission 6: Eliminating the Competition

**Mission 6: Eliminating the Competition**

"Oh look, its one of those again!" said Ryan.

"That's right!" said Chaz. From her seat beside him on a rock just outside Mile, her eyes closed, Rika muttered a word and a field of energy blossomed around each of the three Hunters. 'You can never cast Deban too many times' was one of Rika's personal mottoes. She used it obsessively. It wasn't surprising - it was a cheap technique and you could stack it. In this particular situation it was well justified.

"And we have to fight it this time?"

"No running." Chaz affirmed, in the voice of a fellow prisoner casually observing the length of the queue for the carbon freeze chamber, "Why do they do this to us, Rika? Why can't anyone learn from experience?"

"Some people will do anything to make money." observed Rika.

"Money they'll have to repay when they manage to tear the whole village apart!" said Chaz.

"I think they genuinely believed they'd got it working this time." said Rika, "It's a really stupid idea! You can't breed tame Sandworms, even with that technology they bought from the University! It couldn't even do that back in Birth Valley! Sandworms are just too large and dangerous to contain properly!"

"Knowing my luck, the University will probably find a way to breed Biomonsters and Sandworms together." said Chaz, "Why can't the guards ever spot these illegal packages coming in and out of Piata? If they would just search people properly at the gate, none of these incidents would happen!"

"Let's save this discussion for after the battle. I'm done now." Rika sprang to her feet and drew her claws, "Everyone clear on what they're doing? Remember, Chaz, no more using Megid near an inhabited area. Ryan, don't try and get in a hit unless you're sure its distracted, this thing could one-shot any of us. Chaz, no using the apprentice as a distraction."

"Gotcha!" said Chaz.

"Let's purify in the name of Alis!" yelled Ryan, brandishing his twin daggers and running towards the Sandworm reservation.

Chaz dutifully ran after his apprentice. Using the 'Welcome to the Happy Sandworm Ranch, Adulta 300 Meseta, Children 150 Meseta, No Dogs Allowed' sign as a pole vault, he leapt over the fence and into the enclosure. Underneath him, he could feel the sand rumbling. The Sandworm had already sensed their presence. It was homing in fast on its next meal. He tightened his grip on his sword. Its head emerged first, a dome-shaped mass of chitin and slavering fangs, easily large enough to swallow the Landrover. It had no eyes – it hunted by sound and by feeling the vibrations in the sand above it. Its weak points were between the bone plates on its hide or through the top of its jaw. If he didn't move at the precisely correct time, he knew, he'd be killed instantly.

"NAWAT!"

Chaz flattened himself to the ground just in time as a pillar of supercooled air shot towards him. The Sandworm's screech joined the howling gales, then it was cut short as the beast's head was frozen solid. Accustomed to life in the middle of the desert, it was unprotected against such extreme cold.

When Chaz looked up to see who the hell had used the Nawat technique, he was just in time to see something drop out of the sky, bellowing a Motavian war cry, and beat the Sandworm repeatedly on the head with an axe. After the first few blows, the axe found purchase in its weakened hide and the blade bit into the skull. The huge beast dropped to the floor, thrashing, and the Motavian jumped clear to avoid being crushed under its bulk.

"VOL!"

A sphere of crackling darkness formed around the Sandworm's head. It twitched once, then stopped moving altogether. Already mortally wounded, the creature could not resist the technique, designed to cause electromagnetic interference to the pitch and frequency that would bring about instant death. The Motavian approached the Sandworm, prodded it with his axe, then shouted his confirmation of the creature's death at the top of his lungs.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?" screamed Rika. Chaz looked back at his partner. She was furious, "Chaz! Do something! Those people stole our kill!"

Chaz looked over to where she was pointing. On the far side of the enclosure, weapons drawn, stood two more figures. One was a woman who reminded him of Alys. She looked to be around the same age as Alys had been when she died (not that Chaz ever found out how old she actually was) and she had the same self-assured bearing that made it clear she was the leader of the small party. Her shoulder-length hair was fiery red and she wore a full-length black coat and knee-high boots that parodied the Hunter's Guild uniform. Her companion was a black-haired, depressed-looking young man, shorter than her with a pinched face. The woman wielded slicers and the young man carried a combat knife, although it was sheathed and he had clearly been using techniques in the battle. Her hands on her hips, the woman matched Rika's glare.

"We landed the blow, so the kill was ours. You want to claim the reward, you get the job done. C'mon, we're leaving."

She turned to walk away and the young man followed. The large Motavian yelled at her in his native tongue, then ran after her before he could be left behind. He dragged a Sandworm tooth in one hand. It was large enough for him to use as a shield.

"Wait!" yelled Rika,"Who are you? What do you mean about the reward?"

"I suppose we should introduce ourselves, seeing as we're new to the area. I'm Nisa, the newbie is Azda, the crazy, furry lunatic is Enma." she pointed to the Motavian, who had caught up and was now inspecting his trophy, wiping off the blood onto the hem of his desert robes, "We're Rogues."

"Freelancers?" she said the word in the same tone of voice as she had been heard to say 'Zio'.

"Hmph, you Hunters still think you own everything on Motavia? We're an organised Guild too. I told you, we're the Rogues!"

"Are those people heretics?" asked Ryan, pointing at them. He had only just emerged from behind the Sandworm corpse. He was covered in blood.

"Ryan, we've discussed this before, its rude to point at people and call them heretics."

"Oh, sorry. What's this thing? Is it vital anatomy on Sandworms?"

"Where did you get that?"

"Well, everything had gone confusing and there things flying around, so I thought I'd hide in the sand and sneak up on it while it was distracted."

"Ryan, its very important that you remember this correctly... did you pull out that part of the Sandworm before, after or at the same time that it stopped moving?"

"I don't know. You told me not to stop and think about irrelevant things in the middle of battle."

"This isn't irrelevant! Its a difference of fifteen thousand Meseta!" exclaimed Chaz, "Nobody is leaving until we've verified who exactly landed the kill!"

"What's wrong, you Hunters can't handle the thought of conceding victory to someone else?"

"Listen, this isn't a political issue to me! This commission fee is the only thing earning me enough money to eat this week!" said Chaz.

"You can apply for more work. The Guild gets enough of it in."

"That doesn't mean I'll see any of it! You don't know what that secretary is like!"

"Chaz, you're not making a good impression in front of our rivals." Rika pointed out.

"Okay, tell me this. The ranch owner hired us and I have the documents to prove it, so how come you turned up for the job in the first place?" demanded Chaz.

"They gave up on you and hired us instead. It might have had something to do with you being a day late."

"Our Ryuka got bounced! We ended up in Nalya! I didn't even know the Piata lockdown extended to Mile!" protested Chaz, "Look, if you're so convinced this is a Guild issue, why don't you take up the complaint with the Guild? The receptionist is better authorised to handle complaints than I am." In other words, Chaz thought to himself, I can finally cause some problems for the receptionist instead of the other way round.

"Its a little out of our way – our office is in Kadary – but I guess it wouldn't hurt to go through the proper procedures." said Nisa, "On one condition. This means you accept that we're a legitimate Guild, right?"

"Personally, I think..." Chaz realised he didn't actually know what he thought, having only just met them, "I think you did a good enough job in that last battle. Like I said, though, I have no real authority."

"What are we going to do with that?" asked Ryan, pointing to the Sandworm carcass.

"The ranch owner can deal with it. He said nothing in the contract about cleaning up bodies." said Nisa.

"Hey, don't order my apprentice around!" said Chaz.

"How are you losers going to get back if you can't use Ryuka?" she asked.

"Um... I guess we could walk."

"All the way to Aiedo? We'll give you a lift in our Landrover."

"You have a Landrover?"

"We found it. Its the only one the Rogues have, though, so we have to be careful where we park it."

"Found it? How do you 'find' a Landrover?"

"That's a trade secret."

"Please don't let Enma drive again!" begged Azda. It was the first time he had spoken. He had a very strong Kadary accent.

"Why not? He LOVES driving!"

The Motavian's beak opened wide, his equivalent of a broad grin. He stashed away the Sandworm tooth that he had begun to polish and sharpen. His eyes flashed red for a moment. Then again, Chaz told himself, Motavian eyes do that naturally all the time, so it probably didn't mean anything.


	15. Mission 6: Eliminating the Competition 2

"Are you really an apprentice too?"

Azda nodded unenthusiastically. Both apprentices were bored. As low-ranking members of their respective guilds, they weren't allowed into the meeting, which was deemed too diplomatically sensitive to be held under anything but the tightest security. They lounged around in the waiting room outside the Guildmaster's office. Ryan had been trying to engage Azda in conversation but he was about as forthcoming as the locked, bolted office door. At first he wouldn't give any response other than the occasional non-committal shrug. Gradually, the persistent apprentice was beginning to erode the other young man's social wall.

"What's it like with the Rogues?" he asked.

"More fun than this place looks." said Azda. After a moment's thought, he added, "It still sucks, though. I'm still not allowed to play Zio Metal over the intercom any more."

"What's Zio Metal?"

"Pure dark awesomeness, man."

He began singing something under his breath. Ryan couldn't really tell because Azda's singing was so tuneless and he had such a thick Kadary accent but it sounded like someone shouting incoherently while beating a Biomonster to death with an electric guitar. Every other word was 'Zio'. He also made out 'Dark Force' and possibly 'Prophallus'.

"Um... so... is this what's popular on the mainland?" asked Ryan. The only music they had back in Torinco was First Era folk music and occasional tawdry popular music from the mainland. In his short period as an acolyte in the priesthood of Termi, he tried to join the choir but discovered he had no talent for music whatsoever. He had no idea what was fashionable among people of his own age.

Azda grunted, "Squares don't understand niche. Besides, its a Kadary thing."

"Doesn't your Motavian friend get angry if you go on about Zio all the time?"

"I'm alive, so I guess Enma doesn't care. Everyone knows its all for show, man." said Azda, "Hey, who are the girls?"

"Oh, those are the Pao-Pao girls. Rika says I'm not allowed to go near them or talk to them, ever, and she'll kill me if she finds me or Chaz at a performance."

"Why is that?"

"I'm not sure." admitted Ryan, "But its important not to get Rika angry."

"Well, I'm your responsibility, remember? You have to explain the rules to me properly or I won't be able to follow them, and then you're not doing your job." said Azda, "So we need to go straight away and check with them why we're not allowed to talk to them."

"That sounds logical." said Ryan. They both stood up and walked down the corridor after the bunny girl.

* * *

"I thought that meeting went rather well." said Rika.

"What? I didn't get paid!"

"Compared to most Guild meetings, I meant."

"Well, nobody died, I guess."

While Chaz hadn't been paid, the Guildmaster had agreed to split the money equally between the Rogue and Hunter Guilds. The Guildmaster had promised to officially recognise the Rogues as a rival guild if the Rogues in turn promised not to usurp another Hunter's Guild mission in the same manner again. As it hadn't actually been possible to determine who landed the killing blow, the money was to be paid straight into the Guild banks, not to an individual person.

"'Nobody dying' is not considered a satisfactory result on a mission where you're supposed to be killing things, Chaz." the Guildmaster commented, appearing from the other side of the door just as they were about to leave the corridor.

"Hey, Mile is safe from stupid Sandworm breeding experiments again. Isn't that what we were supposed to achieve?"

"You were supposed to personally kill the Sandworm in the ranch. That was the wording of your contract. You failed your mission."

"I've already had my pay docked. What more do you want from me?" Chaz was about to suggest 'blood' but, as the medical bay was usually understocked, he was worried he would be taken literally.

"What do you take me for? A monster? I was giving you a chance to redeem yourselves."she said, "I have another mission for you. A personal request from the highest levels of Guild administration. If you succeed, you'll be paid double the commission fee from the Sandworm job and all records of your failed mission will be erased."

Chaz tensed. Double the pay generally meant double the risk, even in the best case scenario. This didn't smell like a straightforward job. Not with the Guildmaster in this kind of mood.

"Think about it, Chaz. I'll give you until the other party leaves to accept." she said, "By the way, your apprentice appears to have gone missing."

* * *

_"Look at all the pretty colours in the sky/they make me feel happy and so I..."_ sang Ryan at the top of his voice.

_"... Can defeat the evil that everybody knows!"_ a drunken voice finished for him, shouting halfway across the room. Everyone in the room sang along to the chorus.

"Psst, is this song really about a little spaceship with wings that fights evil?" whispered Azda.

"Its a weird story, I know. We think it must be invented by Motavians. Very drunk Motavians." the bunny girl answered. She was off duty from the dance troupe and had been serving drinks. Ryan and Azda weren't allowed alcohol -not that they dare get drunk, as it would be too easy to spot when they were trying to look innocent in front of their tutors later on - but she had bought them both a Generic Soda. She seemed happy to talk to the two apprentices. Most likely, she thought she could earn more kudos with the Guild for attracting new customers to the bar, "The folk tale was being told in the First Era. Its anyone's guess what happened to make people think they saw something like that."

_"Took me just a little while to learn the game/but now I know I'll never be the same."_

"We have to learn the full history of the Pao-Pao dance, you know," said the girl, "We're not just pretty faces. We're serious entertainers. We have a long and proud tradition to maintain."

Ryan agreed that she wasn't just a pretty face. The rest of her was pretty as well - her long auburn hair, her slim, curvaceous figure, the elegant way she walked... the young apprentice was enraptured. He couldn't stop staring at things he had been told it was sinful to stare at. It didn't help that her outfit didn't do a good job of covering up those things. He was surprised that he didn't feel that guilty or even uncomfortable about watching the performance. He had already memorised the words of the song. They were surprisingly uplifting.

_"I was a thorn and I've turned into a pretty rose!"_

_"PRETTY ROSE!" someone yelled._

"Its an awesome song." said Azda, "Old-skool isn't normally my style. Do you always play this song?"

"We have a repertoire. The Pao-Pao song is everyone's favourite, though. The regulars come to expect it." she said. The crowd were getting increasingly loud as the night went on and the beer flowed. One Hunter wandered too close to the stage but a looming security guard chased him off.

_"Everybody said I couldn't do it but I proved them all wrong/just by singing my song I get better!"_

"AZDA, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?"

Ryan bolted under the table. If Nisa was there, it meant that the meeting was over and Chaz was also potentially nearby. It was even possible that Nisa was looking for him as well, if the two of them had just been sent to find the missing apprentices. An amused look on her face, the girl took her drinks tray and wandered off. Ignoring everyone, including one or two heckles and jeers from people who thought she was part of the act, that she was someone's Guild partner come to drag them out of the bar or even, once or twice, the ghost of Alys, Nisa grabbed Azda by the collar and pulled him to his feet.

"I haven't been drinking! Honest! All the moneys' still there! Count it if you don't believe me!" he protested.

Ryan chose this moment to crawl to the other side of the table, do his best impression of someone who had just randomly fallen over, which quite a lot of the drunk Hunters already had, then pulled himself to his feet and melded into the crowd as best as possible. He could still hear Nisa yelling at the poor apprentice by the time he managed to reach the exit. By the time he left the bar altogether and staggered into the lobby, he could only faintly hear the music.

_"Fantasy and all the things that matter/I've brought them home!"_

* * *

Chaz was waiting for him in the lobby. He looked fatigued. He clutched a coffee - the really strong Guild Special Own Brew - shakily in one hand. He had told Ryan never to drink the coffee, so he guessed they were even now.

"Been looking for you everywhere," he said, "Where've you been?"

"Supervising Azda," he said. He didn't like to tell lies, "Nisa came to pick him up, so I left."

"To be honest, we should probably be supervising Nisa as well." said Chaz.

"The negotiations didn't go well?" Ryan was worried. He didn't want to have to fight Azda.

"On the surface, yes," he said, "We've got an urgent mission."

"What, at this time of night?"

"We need to track them back to their headquarters," explained Chaz, "The Guildmaster doesn't trust them. She wants us to infiltrate the Rogues, find out what they're doing and if it isn't in the interest of the Hunter's Guild or Algol, discover a way to eliminate them."

"But they haven't done anything wrong!"

"Not that we know of," said Chaz, "But, as Rika said yesterday, some people will do anything for money.

* * *

((Lyrics are borrowed from GameJew's Mushroom Singdom review of 'Fantasy Zone'.))


	16. Mission 6: Eliminating the Competition 3

"So, what are we supposed to do, just walk in and pretend we belong there?"

They couldn't follow the Rogues in their Landrover, faster than they could walk and easily handling the terrain, so they used Ryuka to get to the gates of Kadary. The plan was for Chaz and Ryan to watch the front gate and Rika to watch the side gate. Kadary was fairly well fortified with very few ways in and the Rogues weren't going to be able to sneak anywhere with a huge Landrover, so they would only have gone through those two doors. The Hunters would follow them to their headquarters once they reached the city.

"We'll just have to find a way to sneak in." said Chaz, "There's no need to talk to anyone. We can look around and report back if we find anything suspicious."

"How do I know if I find something suspicious?" asked Ryan.

"I have no idea," admitted Chaz, "The receptionist didn't give me too many details. Secret Biomonster cloning labs. An army of attack androids. A shrine to Dark Force. That sort of thing."

"And if we don't find anything suspicious?" asked Ryan.

"We just go back home, I guess."

"How are we going to prove that we really didn't find anything?"

Chaz hadn't thought of that. "We'd have to bring back something that we could only have taken from the Guild, to prove that we really looked everywhere."

"We can't just steal peoples' things!"

"We can give it back once we're finished." he said. The Hunter yawned. It was becoming difficult to stay awake. He amused himself by watching the guards having a massive argument with a group of merchants about the contents of their caravan. Kadary was a fairly busy town at night. Several of the shops were still open, drunks were shouting and singing outside the bar, a couple were trying to meet discretely and failing. Despite being half the size, the town seemed as lively as Aiedo.

Suddenly, Chaz's attention was attracted by two tall figures in the same black uniform as Nisa's party. They were armed with swords. They strolled up to the front gates and the merchants moved out of their way, their earlier bluster lost.

"The general store still open? We're all out of Dimate." one of the Rogues said to the guard before yawning.

"Was last time I checked." he said, "Don't start any trouble. I'm watching you guys."

"Can't start trouble without Dimate." he shrugged, then let himself in through the gate.

"What's all that about?" whispered Ryan.

"I'm guessing their headquarters isn't in Kadary at all." said Chaz, "It can't be far, though. They look like they've just walked here. We'll have to wait and see where they go next. Why don't you run and tell Rika what's happening?"

The apprentice did as he was told and Chaz sat in wait. After half an hour, during which the merchants had finally been let inside, the two Rogues returned. One was carrying two full shopping bags. Suddenly, he pulled his companion to a halt and stood in front of him. They exchanged a few whispered words which became louder and harsher until they soon weren't whispers any more.

"No, I'm not carrying any of your bags for you! This is all your fault for not watching the supply levels!"

"What the... this was supposed to be your job in the first place! You kept whining at me do it! You still owe me a favour!"

"That's no excuse for doing a lousy job!"

"Keep it down! Its four in the morning!" barked the guard.

"Sorry, sir, didn't mean to interrupt your sleep." said the first Rogue.

"What were you DOING to use up the last of the Dimates at three in the morning anyway?" demanded the second.

"None of your business! Shut up about it now!"

It was fortunate for Chaz that the Rogues were weighed down by shopping bags and more interested in their argument than making actual progress. He hadn't wanted to set off after them before his partners returned. Keeping them just within his line of sight, he managed not to lose track of them before the others ran over to him.

"CHAZ! Guess what I saw!" yelled Ryan. Chaz gave him a stern look and put a finger to his lips but it was too late. The second Rogue turned around, drawing his blade.

"What was that noise?" he demanded.

"What noise?" asked the man with the bags, "It must be a Sandworm. A giant Queen Sandworm that eats lazy slackers."

"No, I mean it. We're being followed."

"Well, if they're going to follow us to Headquarters, they're not doing themselves any favours." he replied, "It'd be like a mouse wandering into a Musk Cat convention."

Chaz gulped. He didn't like the mental images that the man's choice of words conjured. The three of them kept quiet from then on, moving slowly and keeping a good distance from the Rogues. These people are at least as competent and organised in battle as Hunters. How would he break into the Hunter's Guild? He had to admit it was the sort of thing he had plans for, even though he wasn't sure why he would need to, but they weren't very good plans.

It worried him even more when he saw where their Headquarters was.

"Is that right on top of...?" whispered Rika.

"Looks that way." said Chaz, "I guess Rogues must not be very superstitious."

Where Zio's tower had once stood, very little remained, only a few scattered ruins. Peering over what was left of the Gothic architecture, the leering gargoyles and the stone vines that looked as if they had really grown around the walls, Chaz fought off a rush of memories. The glowing red eyes, utterly consumed by evil, that terrible mocking laughter, the oppressive surge of blackness, pure, malevolent energy, Alys pushing him out of the way, her scream... Rika placed a hand on his shoulder to steady him.

"Its okay," he whispered, "I'm used to this." Chaz hadn't had a flashback that vivid for over a month, although he still saw Alys' face in dreams. Everything reminded him of what had happened. He couldn't avoid it, living in the same house, working in the same Guild. This just reminded him more than usual.

He focussed his mind on watching the Rogues go about their business, as well as keeping an eye on Ryan, who was fascinated by everything and looked ready to go and poke things he shouldn't poke. There was a barbed wire fence and armed guards around the ruins. While there had been an attempt to clean the place up, the only intact structure was a large tent in the middle of the ruins. It was clear that they had set up underground, inside the machine complex of Nurvus. They had cleared a space to park their Landrover. As the vehicle was currently parked and it was unlikely the Rogues would have been able to find two, the party must already have arrived home from Aeido. There were tracks from Nurvus to the space station, both a vehicle and people dragging heavy boxes. It looked like they had been storing all their equipment there. Wren and Demi had left with their only spaceship so there was no way they could know what the structure was for. The machine centre and the space station had facilities for humans to live there – presumably the machines had needed human operators at some stage – so he supposed it would make a fairly comfortable base. Apart from the guards, many of the Rogues were wandering around on night errands, practising techniques they couldn't use in a confined space with other people around or just fooling around. Someone was staring up at the stars and humming a Third Era song.

The two Rogues walked up to the guards and had a brief conversation. Somehow, the first Rogue persuaded a guard to help him with the bags. They carried the supplies in the tent. Chaz watched the guards' movement patterns and slowly crept closer to the encampment. With only one, carefully guarded entrance, it would be difficult to sneak into the tent.

"We need a distraction." said Rika.

"Well, there seem to be a lot of guards posted on that Landrover compared to everyone else. They must really rely on it." said Chaz, "Think we could do something to it?"

"I might be able to but I'll need to concentrate. It'll mean some serious techniques."

"I'll keep watch."

"As soon as I'm successful, run for it." she said.

The Numan crouched down and began peering intently at the parked Landrover. Chaz felt the technique energy building up around her. One of the guards was about to move towards the vehicle. He yelled in surprise when he walked straight into an invisible wall – actually one of Rika's maximised Deban techniques cast around the Landrover. Chaz had never heard of anyone using Deban that way, or even being able to but Rika was slightly more obsessive about the technique than most Hunters. It was her way of making sure nobody else died.

The guard called the alarm and suddenly the Landrover park was swarming with guards, all looking in different directions. One of them was a trained technique-user; Chaz felt the uncomfortable, prying sensation of someone telementally searching for the source of a technique in use. He signalled to Rika, who dropped the technique. They began running. Despite the force field around the vehicle disappearing, the guards were still paranoid. As they ran, Rika quickly turned on and off her Illusion skill so that random images of her with trace psychic signals would manifest around the area. Although Rika was slightly exhausted by the time they reached the tent, they entered without being discovered while confusion reigned outside.

The basement of the Tower had been turned into a lobby. There was a coffee table with comfortable leather chairs. Second Era music was playing over an intercom system. Fortunately for the Hunters, the receptionist appeared to be asleep. They crept past.

"How can he sleep with all the commotion going on outside?" whispered Rika.

"Maybe he can't hear it over the sound of his own snoring." volunteered Chaz.

Rika walked up to one of the computer terminals and accessed it. She shook her head, "The computers have been in use. I don't know how well they can use them. They might be able to detect hacking. I might be able to bring a basic map up, though. These things should be designed so that visitors can see the map."

Chaz waited for her to finish using the computer. He had no idea how these things worked. Whenever the party had to use machines, Wren or Demi sorted it for him. He kept watch, ready to dive down a side corridor if he saw anyone.

"I think I can plot a route." said Rika, "We can use the terminals to change the route if it turns out to be too heavily used. Its a huge facility and Nisa was talking as though this Guild wasn't very big, so we should be able to stay out of sight."

He shrugged and followed her. They almost bumped into a few Rogues. They wandered up to the terminals and used them to check the maps, open nearby doors, order coffee from the vending machines or play video games. While they obviously didn't have their own army of attack androids yet, they were using the technology with much more proficiency than most people would, except for the students in the Academy. They walked past several rooms used as sleeping quarters, a refectory, a few store rooms and a door that was labelled as an armoury. They had managed to lock it. From what Chaz had seen, they used the same weapons as Hunters. In one of the store rooms, the two Hunters had replaced the Dimate and were sat on crates, still arguing about it. A lot of the facility was simply unused. They could tell where the Rogues had got up to with their exploration and when it was still abandoned. Most of the unneeded computers had shut down to conserve power.

"I wonder if they've been any lower yet?" whispered Rika, "If they try to mess with the control systems of Motavia, they could do some serious damage!"

"Demi wouldn't have made a system that important so easy to mess with." said Chaz. He wondered where the little android had gotten to. She had spent most of his quest directly wired up to planetary control systems, so he hadn't seen much of her. When he had travelled with her, she hadn't said much. He didn't have many memories of her. She was always in the background – vital, absolutely critical to Motavia's existence, but not in a way that people write about in legends.

They took the stairs down anyway. The lower level wasn't as well used. It seemed to mostly be a place for private conversations, storing more valuable goods (which amounted to a stash of Trimate and the pay box – both behind locked doors that Rika didn't want to risk hacking) and a place to run to in an emergency. They had tried to unlock the door to the control systems but had run out of password guesses and locked themselves out.

"It doesn't like there's much down here." said Rika.

"I wonder where their administration offices are? I would have expected them to be on the lower levels." said Chaz, "If we're going to take something meaningful back, paperwork is probably the way to go."

"They probably lock up all their paperwork too..."

Rika stopped still and put her finger to her lips. They slowly moved backward. In the almost total darkness of the disused corridor, Chaz hadn't seen the young man, dressed in black and also moving silently, until he started humming nervously under his breath. The Hunters hoped he hadn't seen them but he began walking towards them.

"You guys?"

"Azda?" whispered Ryan.

"What the hell are you doing down here?"


	17. Mission 6: Eliminating the Competition 4

"I'm not really supposed to tell anyone." said Ryan.

"Well... I guess we're friends. You introduced me to those girls. You've gotta tell nobody you saw me, though, right?"

Ryan nodded.

"What girls?" Rika glared at him.

"We can't talk about unnecessary things now! We're on a mission!" said Ryan.

"Look, I'll show you, seeing as you're not going to tell anyone." Azda fumbled with something at his belt, then held it up for Ryan to see. It was a sword. Eldritch runes were carved upon its blade and it crackled with a dark aura that stood out from the blackness of the corridor, as though it was a living, vibrant darkness, not just an absence of light.

"Is that a Shadowblade?" asked Chaz.

"Found it in the ruins." said Azda, "Its mine now. I'm not handing it in. They won't let an apprentice like me keep it."

"But you might die if you cut yourself on it!"

"I'll be careful. Look, I've been able to use Vol since I was a kid. This is no different. I'm going to be known as the Guild's instant death specialist. Cool, huh?"

"If that's your goal, you're going to have to tell them you have it eventually. Where are you going to keep it that they won't search?" asked Chaz, "I won't tell, though. I used to hide things all the time."

"Where are you going, anyway?"

"We don't know." admitted Chaz.

"Want to draw cat whiskers on the receptionist's face?" asked Azda, "If we get him in enough trouble, nobody will care about us."

"That's not a bad idea..." Chaz couldn't imagine what it would be like to work somewhere with a normal, even slightly incompetent, receptionist.

"Chaz! Show some professional integrity!" hissed Rika.

Suddenly, there was a loud metal thud. All four of them darted away into the shadows.

"What was that?" whispered Azda.

"You tell me." replied Chaz.

The noise was repeated several times. Then, suddenly, the door of the control room flew across the corridor, landing with a clang. Despite being thick enough to withstand a Positron Bolt in an enclosed space, it had been ripped out of the wall. Mechanical drones poured out of the hole, as tall and heavily armed as Wren, around fifteen in total. The four of them watched in horror as the small army was accompanied by the slow, heavy footsteps of a Lifedeleter and a swarm of Floatmines, their sirens wailing. A terminal next to Chaz, previously turned off, switched itself on and began flashing red text at him. SECURITY VIOLATION. A Warren android's blinking red eyes stared straight at him, then it fired its laser rifle.

He threw himself out of the way, then answered in kind with a Nathu technique, which removed the android's head. It toppled to the floor but was immediately replaced with three more. The others were already moving to retreat.

"Vol doesn't work on them!" cried Azda, "What'm I supposed to do?"

"Go and raise the alarm!" he yelled back.

"But you'll be caught!"

"That doesn't matter now! These things can kill us all!" said Chaz. He heard Rika begin to use Deban on them. He didn't know where Ryan was at all. A Floatmine rushed them and Chaz had to strike at its detonator to render it useless before it exploded right next to them. The tight corridor meant they couldn't all swarm him but it also meant they were all dead if a Floatmine managed to explode.

Azda ran down the corridor, yelling. Chaz prayed to Alis that the boy would send reinforcements, that Ryan wasn't planning some crazy suicide charge, that the Rogues wouldn't decide they were also the enemy, that they would survive even that long against the relentless advance of the robots.

Several of the androids and even one of the Lifedeleters were down. Rika was mentally exhausted now and their shields had worn out. Chaz had a burn down one of his arms where he hadn't been fast enough to dodge a laser bolt. Rika stood in front of him and used her last Illusion while he rummaged for a Dimate in his backpack. He thought about leaving. This mission was doomed to failure anyway. Ryan wouldn't be out of Hinas range. Still, something felt wrong about leaving the Rogues to their fate. He at least wanted to see who won the battle. He might be able to help the Rogues retreat, or if they managed to win, talk them out of trying to do anything to the control systems. Why had the androids just attacked like this? It didn't feel like they were really just responding to a security threat. For a start, they should be able to get through the door without destroying it.

Rika yelped and threw herself to the ground to avoid a hail of Micron Missiles. Another Lifedeleter was in front of them. Chaz stepped forward, ready to swing at the huge robot, when he heard a deranged scream in Motavian. Enma slammed into the Lifedeleter. His axe went straight through its chest. He turned around and grabbed a Floatmine, throwing it back at the others. They exploded in a chain reaction, making a hole in both walls of the corridor.

"Idiot! Learn something besides Vol!" Nisa chastised Azda as they ran down the corridor. The woman's twin slicers hurtled through the air, embedding themselves into an android's head. It toppled over.

"Gotcha some more Dimate!" yelled another voice. The two swordsmen ran from the other direction. An android blocked their path and was cut down by a flurry of sword strokes.

They attacked from every direction, clearing a path so they could regroup. However, they could not drive the androids back. No matter how many they cut down, more of them poured through the door. More of them began appearing out of the security hatches and ventilation shafts now, or from previously hidden panels in the walls. The entire building, previously sleeping, had turned against them. Nisa ordered them to retreat. Because he couldn't be made to stop, Enma held the rear guard.

As they made their way up to the first floor, Chaz could hear the sounds of battle all around him. The Rogues on the first floor were already engaged against the androids who had been waiting there, deactivated until now. Several had fallen, their screams ringing down the corridors.

"They're blocking the front door!" one of the guards yelled. As they ran for the entrance, they saw that it really was entirely blocked. Ten Lifedeleters stood in the way. The androids had decided to stop them leaving.

"Did you do something to offend them?" demanded Chaz.

"We gave up trying to get down there weeks ago!" replied Nisa.

"Okay, I've got an idea. Get everyone away from the door as fast as possible." said Chaz, "In fact, get everyone off this floor."

"Don't you dare use Megid!" warned Rika.

"Can you see any other option? The building can withstand it."

"There's no need for that."

Chaz turned to look for the voice that had addressed him, far too calm for the situation. As he did so, all the androids shut down. The effect was surreal. As they had all begun moving at once, they all stopped, completely motionless, even when one Rogue hacked the head from one of them, avenging his fallen comrade.

"Please cease all hostilities or I shall reconsider deactivating the security forces, faulty or no."

"Demi! Its Demi!" yelled Chaz, "Nobody attack the small android!"

"Please find another way to refer to me," said Demi, stepping over one of the lifeless Warren androids, "I apologise for the inconvenience. This system has malfunctioned. I planned to act to restore the situation as quickly as possible but I had to travel from Zelan."

Chaz imagined whatever was stored in the space station was now ruined, "Is the control system...?"

"Negative. Only the security forces. Motavia is not in danger at the present."

"What caused the malfunction?"

"As far as I can tell, it was a random failure caused by malicious information," she said, "It was not hacked and no recognisable virus was found. However, I would ask that all humans leave the area immediately. I will restore the system manually again."

"Who is this, and why is she ordering us around?" asked Nisa.

Chaz explained who Demi was.

"Oh," said Nisa, "Maybe she should be talking to the Guildmaster."

"I am happy to make arrangements with the person in charge. I shall assist as best I can," said Demi, "While you are trespassing, I have caused you to lose lives by not responding promptly."

Nisa shrugged, "You should have put a 'no entry' sign or something, then. No matter. We'll find somewhere else. We always do."

"Have you been moving for a while?" asked Chaz.

"Most people trust us about as far as the Guild does. Sending spies isn't the worst thing that people have tried to do," she said, "The Guildmaster doesn't see things the same way as everyone else. He still thinks its the Second Era. The sort of person who can persuade Motavians to work for him isn't the type that can see eye to eye with everyday society. "

"What do you mean?"

"Its a trade secret."

"Are these your trade secrets? Recruiting Motavians and finding Landrovers?"

"We get both of them from the same garbage dump, too." said Nisa, "If you want to take something back with you that's evidence of some terrible scandal, you're welcome to have the receptionist. We should have fired him ages ago."

"Demi, what did you mean when you said Motavia isn't in danger 'at the present'?" asked Rika.

"Nurvus does not simply malfunction," said Demi, "Only Dark Force has ever caused such problems within the system. I can't even trace the path of the signals. When I said the failure was 'random', this was not meant to trivialise the issue. It simply means I cannot find the root of the problem. I am taking this matter seriously."

After finding Ryan - he had been busy protecting Azda during the battle - they bade Demi goodbye and returned to Aiedo. They were just happy to be home.

"First these rivals appearing, then the problems with Nurvus," said Rika, "It feels like Motavia's changing again."

"I don't think the world really stands still." said Chaz, "Maybe its good that there are other organisations like the Hunters. We should be treating them as allies, not hindering them by ruining their reputation. We can't protect the entire planet at once. There'll be more problems we can't solve."

"None of us would have survived if it wasn't for Demi." noted Rika, "Maybe we should visit Demi again to say hello. Do you think Wren's here too?"

"... Rika, we can't just pop into Nurvus to say hello. She's probably wired to the mainframe again."

"We could leave her a thank you gift, then."

Chaz sighed. He turned to see what Ryan was doing. The apprentice was humming a tune, the one that Azda had been singing.

"Ryan, you still haven't told me about the girls." said Rika.


	18. Mission 7: The Power of Feeve 1

Mission 7: The Power of Feeve

"Sorry, Rika, I'm already on a mission."

"What kind of mission involves you hanging around the Guild House instead of doing any work?"

Chaz leant over the table and whispered conspiratorially into her ear, "Its a secret!"

"Well, it looks like you're slacking off."

"Why would I be awake so early if I was slacking off?"

"Because I always wake you up when you try and stay in bed all day," she said, "Although you really shouldn't try hiding in the Guild bar. Its right next to the notice boards and you'll be found out as soon as someone comes in to look at the jobs!"

"Stop drawing attention to me!" he yelled, then looked around at the bar and lowered his voice to a harsh whisper, "Look, if I tell you what I'm doing, will you be quiet and not do anything else to jeopardise my mission?"

She stared at him as though she was a psychiatrist and he was a particularly interesting patient, "Okay, what's this mysterious mission?"

"Its an internal mission. Well, its more an urgent request," he said, "I was hired to find out what they put in the coffee!"

"... are you being serious?" she demanded, "Who put you up to this? Was it another Hunter?"

"I'm not allowed to disclose that! If it turns out to be a bigger conspiracy than we thought, there's a risk that someone could get hurt!"

"So... have you found out yet? What's in the coffee?"

"Saner."

"Pardon?"

"There's nothing in the coffee. There is, however, someone using Saner. Probably that man wandering around pretending to collect cups. Notice how he hardly ever picks up a cup?"

"What? But techniques aren't allowed in the Guild House!"

"Oh, lots of Hunters break that rule. Its easy to disguise a technique if its something subtle, like Deban or Saner, and you know how to use techniques without speaking or moving your arms. Its a trick you pick up in combat, so your enemy doesn't know what you're doing," he explained, stirring his coffee and watching the pattern of the swirls, "You would have to be a very experienced technique-user to pick out everyone drinking coffee and use Saner on them at exactly the right moment. Unless there are more people doing it. You only need line of sight, so they might be hiding in the kitchen, looking through the window in the door. Terrifying, huh? What else could they be doing to us without our consent? That's why I have to be so careful!"

"Chaz... whatever's in the coffee, you should stop drinking it before it completely destroys your sanity," she sighed, "And you need to get a real job, one that means you get some time outdoors, away from the coffee and the receptionist and all the other stressful things. Besides, I think you might find this job interesting. Its an urgent personal request."

"So is the mission I'm on!"

"This one's from Rune."

Coffee spilled over the rim of the cup, disturbed by his increasingly intense stirring. He looked at it as though it was some kind of delicate diplomatic situation that had just dissolved into all-out war.

"And you question my sanity," he said.

* * *

_Dear Rika and Shorty,_

_How have you been? Have you got anywhere together or is Chaz still too immature? I need some help and I trust you slightly more than the other incompetents at the Hunter's Guild, or at least I know you've had enough experience of this sort of thing that I won't have to explain absolutely every little detail to you. Its important to the future of Algol, so I hope you'll accept this mission. There's a crate of Sol Dew in it for you. Meet me in Termi this afternoon. I'll be standing under the statue of Alis._

_See you soon,_

_Rune_

Vaguely, Chaz remembered that Ryan had requested the week off to celebrate some kind of important religious holiday that was happening in Termi. When they reached the town, it was absolutely packed. It was almost impossible for them to move through the crowds of pilgrims. The closer they came to the statue of Alis, the worse the congestion was. The queue to climb the steps almost stretched to the front gates of the town. Prayers, hymns and the occasional loud religious experience drowned out any other noise as the procession moved slowly up the steps, each devotee in turn pausing to kneel at the feet of the statue, mutter a quick prayer and leave a small offering. Chaz spotted Ryan chatting to a man in gleaming armour and a white tunic who was observing the crowd from a distance, alert to any sign of the kind of trouble that always brewed in large crowds. The Alisian Faith had come a long way from a quirky pastime in a town cut off from the rest of the mainland by earthquakes and an antlion infestation. They now had their own small company of Paladins, their national holidays were officially recognised everywhere except Kadary, who were still nervous about cults, and there was even an Alis-worshipping Professor of Ancient Algolian History at the Academy, to replace the old one, who was a Motavian, and had been arrested for murdering a student with an axe after they accidentally spelled his name with more than four letters.

It took him a while to spot Rune, until he realised that the reason so many people were having mystical visions of Lutz talking to them was because the Esper was randomly teleporting in and out of the crowd wearing a white hooded robe, with his hair down. Underneath the cowl, it was easy for him to hide his desperate struggle not to burst into laughter.

"Where's this crate of Sol Dew, then?" demanded Chaz. Rune jumped. He had been inspecting the statue of Myau with the air of a man wondering what it was possible to do with a statue of Myau when you looked like Lutz.

"That doesn't look like very responsible behaviour for a Lutz!" said Rika.

"A trainee Lutz," corrected Rune, adjusting his cloak, "And I have everyone convinced I'm the real thing, so I must be doing something right in my training!"

"Aren't you supposed to be watching over all Algol?"

"From the looks of it, most of Algol is here, and I can see them all just fine from the top of the hill, thank you," he said, "So, I take it you're accepting my commission."

"Can we talk about it where there's less noise?" yelled Chaz, over the sound of someone chanting in what he guessed was ancient Palman, after having pointed at Rune and fallen over.

"Okay," he said, then he snapped his fingers and they were on Rykros.

* * *

"Sorry, I should have warned you about that," Rune called down to Chaz, who had fallen off the crystalline, bright green rock they had landed on.

"I've been doing a lot of magical research as part of my Lutz training. One important thing I've been learning is long range teleportation. I'm having trouble getting it precise."

"... and so you decided to teleport in and out of crowds for practice? What if you hurt someone?" yelled Chaz.

"I was expecting people to just move out of the way," he admitted, "The 'mistaking me for Lutz' thing just sort of happened. I... guess I'm not very different from him any more. I'm not surprised I look like him. I'm starting to remember it all as if I was actually there when it happened. And it isn't just memories any more. I start thinking like him. Its difficult to stay yourself, when you're supposed to have bits of other people's destinies inside you," he sighed and folded his arms, looking out over the lonely landscape of the silent planet, a Cathedral to deities who were no longer present. The wind blew particles of crystalline dust into their faces, covering him in a fine residue, and for a moment Rune looked like he really was thousands of years old, "Anyway, I didn't hire you to listen to my problems. I need your help with a more practical task. I found something. Do you remember the Tower of Anger?"

Chaz did remember the Tower of Anger, although he wished he didn't. It brought back memories that made him wish he could think about the coffee conspiracy, maybe even the receptionist, anything as long as he didn't have to see Alys' face frozen in an expression of dead-eyed hostility like a broken android again. He nodded blankly, "Kinda hard to forget."

"I found another like it, on the exact polar opposite side of the planet. I think its something to do with another forbidden technique. There's something protecting it, like Re-Faze, and it won't let me in. It keeps telling me over and over again that I'm not the one who can learn it. I thought it might be you who could learn it, seeing as you were the one who could learn Megid," explained Rune, "Its called Feeve."


	19. Mission 7: The Power of Feeve 2

"Isn't that a swear word in Motavian?"

"I don't know. I've never heard of such a thing. Its not in any of the books in the Esper Mansion library," he said, "All I know is that techniques are sometimes lost. Its not unheard of. They're discovered to be possible, then their inventors don't tell anyone because they don't think the technique is useful, or think it might be too unstable to use safely, or they just don't want to fill out the paperwork. But I guess it can't just be a useless technique if its kept in a guarded tower on Rykros on its own."

"So you think its dangerous."

"Quite possibly."

"So you hired us to deal with it."

"Hey, don't get the wrong idea! Didn't I tell you it was because you could open the last one? Geez... you never listen to me!"

"Of course we'd like to help an old friend!" said Rika.

Chaz sighed. If it was a matter of friendship, he wouldn't be able to talk Rika out of it. She had very few ties to the world, so she valued them all. She didn't know that many other people, she didn't have any family, her home had been destroyed when the AI that created her self-destructed, the only people in her world were the other Protectors and the friends she had met in her new life in the Guild with Chaz, and that hadn't been going for very long.

An entire crate of Sol Dew was worth quite a lot of money, even if it turned out that there was only one bottle left in it. Even if Ryan insisted they keep it to use, you never knew when you would need a Sol Dew.

On their way to the Tower of Feeve, they stopped at the Silence Temple to rest. Rune sat in Le Roof's chamber and meditated for a long time, in commune with the Eternal Guardian of Algol's Knowledge.

"Why, yes, she's looking as good as ever," he muttered under his breath, "Something's not right with Algol, you know. I ended up in the Plate System. Yes, I know, my aim's not perfect, okay? Anyway, everything in the building attacked me at once. I wanted to tell Demi, but I couldn't get a signal through to her."

Chaz opened his mouth to ask what he was talking about but he wasn't sure if it was safe to interrupt a Lutz who was talking about Lutz things to a minor deity, or if it was the sort of thing he wanted to know.

* * *

A few hours later, their trek across the windswept plains of Rykros began again. The planet didn't look dead, like a field did after you accidentally scoured it with a Megid technique. It was definitely supposed to look like that. It had the permanent feel of something that was shut down for maintenance, the way any planet would that expected visitors, but only once every thousand years or so. It felt as though there were other things happening in the background, things beyond mortal comprehension that nobody, even Lutz, would ever be allowed access to. Nothing had changed in the last five thousand years on Rykros and nothing ever would, even if every last fortification of Algol fell.

Rika tried her best to lighten the mood as they walked through the dust by practically forcing Rune to tell her everything that had happened in his life since they met. Most of his training was top secret and, since he had little time to himself outside training to be Lutz, he had little to talk about, except for the few times he had seen Raja, who was doing his best to get himself excommunicated from the Gumbious Temple. Apparently there had been an incident in which a Dezolis Penguin had been mistaken for a nun. Lots of beer had been involved. When the conversation ran dry, Rika told Rune everything she could think of to tell him about their own adventures. This mostly involved embarassing facts about Chaz that he didn't really want her telling the one person whom he could rely on to mock him. Mercifully, they reached the Tower of Feeve before she could tell him about the Rappy incident.

Rykrosians were not inventive with their building designs. It looked exactly like the Tower of Hate, except that when they stood before the door, a disembodied voice resounded through the air.

"Protectors, your destiny grants you the right to enter the Tower of Feeve. Now, be judged in the Tower, and earn the right to use the forbidden technique 'Feeve'!"

* * *

"Told you these things worked for you," said Rune, slapping him on the back, then shoving him into the doorway as the door rumbled ominously open to admit them.

Like the others, the layout of the Tower was fairly simple, two floors with a series of corridors divided by stairs, rather like one of the less confusing University dorms in Piata (the most confusing of them looking, and smelling, like the Garuberk Tower). There were no agents of the Profound Darkness lying in wait for them this time around – Chaz had always wondered how exactly they got into these Towers that only a destined few could even open the door of, on a planet that you needed an artifact that Rune kept with him at all times in order to find on a map, without even breaking the seals on the doors and, with a few exceptions, without being immediately killed by the Guardians.

On the top floor, or possibly the middle of the second floor, they reached a tall door with intricate engravings that led into a small isolated chamberwith a fancy carpet. Chaz expected to be the only one allowed in but when they walked through, nothing barred their passage and Chaz didn't mysteriously find himself separated frim the group. Suddenly, they were face to face with the tenple's Guardian itself, floating in mid-air, a stone structure wreathed in golden flame. A globular body floated above squat legs, crowned by large pointed ears. It looked like a three-year-old had drawn Rika. Chaz drew his sword. These things were deadly, whatever they happened to look like.

Protectors, have you come to claim the holy power of Feeve? Who among you will step forwards?

"I, Chaz Ashley, Protector of Algol!" said Chaz, brandishing his sword, then lowering it and walking slowly forwards. Suddenly, he was engulfed by a golden blaze. It wasn't painful but the roaring of the flames filled his senses and suddenly there was only the flames, darkness and his innermost thoughts. Like a lucid dreamer, he willed himself to look around. The flames whirled and leaped, forming shapes.

Um, what am I supposed to do? Chaz thought to himself and whoever else was listening. There was a lurching sensation, then he woke up on the far side of the corridor, upside down.

Unworthy Palman, you are not the chosen inheritor! Begone!

"I don't think it likes me," he told Rune. The wizard swore in Esper. It had surprisingly strong curses for such a fluid, sophisticated-sounding language.

At that point, Rika yelped and collapsed onto the floor. Chaz immediately bent down to examine her. She was still breathing. Seconds later, she opened her eyes. They were glowing golden. She stared at Chaz, then said "Meow?"

Chaz glared at the Guardian, "What have you done to her?"

Rika, inheritor of Myau's destiny, has been shown the power of Feeve, Last Technique of the Musk Cats!

"What? That's crazy! Rika isn't a cat!" cried Chaz.

"Meow!" declared Rika, staring at Chaz, then the blank-faced Guardian, then an amused-looking Rune.

"Don't just stand there smirking, do something!" yelled Chaz, "You can heal people!"

"I have no idea how to heal meowing, sorry."

"Haven't you got some Sol Dew? That stuff can heal anything! You... do actually have my payment, right? Because I want extra danger money if you don't heal Rika right away!"

"Calm down! Nobody's been hurt!" said Rune, reaching into his robes and procuring a small perfume bottle. He reached down to remove the stopper, then drew his hand back as a golden glow suffused the bottle.

"Meow!" said Rika, sounding more insistent. She pointed to the bottle. Slowly, the top turned and lifted from the bottle.

Rune burst out laughing.

"What's so funny?" demanded Chaz.

"Don't you know the legend of Myau, Chaz?" asked Rune, "You don't get taught anything useful at the Hunter's Guild, do you? When Alis first met Myau, he had a bottle of Alshline around his neck. He was supposed to use it to revive Odin, who had been turned to stone by Medusa, but he couldn't open the bottle! Myau must have been working in secret since then to create a technique for opening bottles! No wonder he sealed it in the Tower... something like that would revolutionise Musk Cat society! They would have no need for opposable thumbs! He must have planned to only release it to the people he trusted most, so they would gently introduce its use into society."

"And now Rika knows it?" said Chaz, "And she thinks she's a cat? Why Rika?"

"Aren't Numans supposed to have some Musk Cat DNA? Or maybe the Guardian just thought she looked like a cat... or was a trustworthy person... who knows..." Rune shrugged.

"Stop sounding so relaxed! I can't take her back home like this! What if the receptionist asks her if I've been slacking off and she says 'meow' and the receptionist decides that 'meow' means 'yes'?"

"I suppose there's one place where they might know what's going on," said Rune, "They're experts on the subject of being a cat."


	20. Mission 7: The Power of Feeve 3

Chaz extricated himself from the snowdrift, shook himself down and glared at Rune.

"... what? I warned you this time!"

"How come you two aren't covered in snow and I am?" he demanded, "Are you sure you're just aiming badly?"

"If I was good at aiming, we'd actually be in the Myst Vale and not somewhere near Reshel!"

"Meow?" asked Rika.

"It could be worse," Chaz told her, "At least we're near a town. A town that sells Sol Dew. So I can stop and get myself dried off and Rune can go and get my payment. I've done everything you asked me to do!"

"Technically, Rika carried out the commission..."

"You addressed the commission to Rika!"

"Meow!" agreed Rika.

"I did? Oh, yes, I did. Oh well..."

After a brief stop at the town, they began the journey south towards Myst Vale. The death of the Profound Darkness had halted the unnatural snow storms and the Dezolisians had managed to clear a path between all the important trade routes, if not completely clear the areas made impassible by the snow. A kind of primitive Ice Digger had been invented, much the same as the Hydrofoil that the Motavians had made except not made out of things they found in the garbage. They managed to book passage on one of these Ice Diggers between Jut and Myst Vale. Soon, they were inside the home of the Musk Cats, where Chaz learnt that Dezolis Owls did not disappear or become less homicidal upon the removal of apocalyptic threats. By the time he saw the two guards stood in front of the passage to the inner chamber, where the cats actually lived, he was glad of the warmth and the peace.

_Welcome back, meow,_ said a voice in his head, _when are you going to give us back the Silver Fang you borrowed off us?_

"Um, sorry, I don't remember where we put it," he turned to Rika, "Do you remember?"

"Meow," she shrugged.

_Why does the one with pointy ears talk like a normal person instead of a human, meow?_ Two curious blue eyes peered up at them. The small ginger cat was soon joined by another, who sprang forwards and sniffed Rika.

_I smell a strange energy from this one, meow_, it commented_, it feels familiar, but I have not seen it before. Should we tell the Old Man?_

"If you think the Old Man would know what's going on, please could we see him? We need help urgently," said Chaz.

_The human is being polite. It must be an emergency, meow,_ commented the first Musk Cat. They looked at each other, purred in agreement and sprang off down the corridor.

Chaz continued walking until he reached the inner chamber, where the Old Man slept, surrounded by cats who slept in corners of their own, ran in circles around the dais or glared at each other, locked in their own private psychic arguments. The ancient cat gave the impression that he probably hadn't moved, or even woken up, since Chaz last saw him. As Chaz approached, he opened one eye.

_You found something that's not for humans, didn't you meow?_

Chaz nodded, "We're not sure what happened. We're sorry if we caused any offence. Do you know how to bring Rika back to normal?"

_She looks like she's behaving perfectly normally to me, meow,_ the giant cat yawned and moved his head to look at Rika, who was on all fours, chasing after the cats who had been running about.

"For a Musk Cat! But she's not a Musk Cat! She's a Numan, and, true, I'm not sure how Numans are supposed to act because they're, well, new, but I'm fairly sure they're not cats! They hardly look anything like cats at all!"

"Old Man, I think you might be interested in some of the things inside Rika's mind," said Rune, "They could be of help to the entire Musk Cat race. Could you just look inside? Think of it as a favour from Myau to Noah."

_I already loaned you the Silver Fang, meow, and you lost it._

"Its not lost, I just don't know where it is right at the moment."

_And Myau gave you that bottle. You used up that too, meow._

"Yeah, about that bottle..." he sighed, "Look, if Rika wants to get to know her inner Musk Cat, that's fine by me. Its good that at least someone has a choice. And if Myau needs her for something, I guess none of us has a say in it anyway. But please try and talk to her. Just so we know what it is that she wants."

The cat yawned again, stood up, turned around on the spot for a while, his wings flapping lazily, then decided his bed was comfortable again and settled back down.

_It'll be a long ritual, meow, and you might not want to observe any more Musk Cat rituals. Why don't you get some sleep in the next room while we work?_

"Come on, let's leave them to it," said Rune, ushering Chaz out of the chamber.

"Will it be okay?" the Hunter asked him.

"I'm sure she'll be okay. She's still, what, only ten years old? She's still discovering who she is anyway."

"What about the Feeve technique? You said it would be dangerous for it to get into the wrong hands..."

"That was thousands of years ago. There were a lot more Musk Cats when Myau was alive. The population has been in decline for a long time, so they need something as powerful as a Forbidden Technique of their own if they want to advance. And the Old Man's a good leader. You can tell. He hardly ever does anything. He wouldn't abuse forbidden knowledge if it involved staying awake for longer than half an hour. Besides, some Musk Cats can get the tops off bottles by themselves. They've had a long time to practice. "

"Doesn't that make it a pointless technique?"

He shrugged, "Human bodies can heal by themselves, but Res isn't a pointless technique. Anyway, I vote we actually get some sleep. Its a custom to follow the Old Man's advice around here."

Relaxing as it was to be in a chamber full of relaxed, purring cats, Chaz couldn't sleep. The pile of Dezo Owl down feathers they had made up for him didn't look that appealing a bed, and besides, he was worried about Rika. He sat and watched Rune sleep. The Esper's sleep was fitful. He argued with himself angrily in two different voices. Chaz didn't recognise the language they were speaking.

* * *

The next morning, Rika was herself again, so they collected their fee from Rune and he teleported them home. They said their goodbyes and Chaz promised that he would help Rune if ever he was needed for a similar experiment, or if ever a dire fate threatened Algol, with the implication that this was both fairly inevitable and likely to happen in less than one thousand years' time. Rika promised to send him a postcard. On the way home, Rika told Chaz all about her adventures as a Musk Cat.

"It was fun at first, but it kind of wears off," she explained, "They don't really do anything. Well, they do, inside their own heads, but I don't really understand what they think of as fun. I guess I'm not Musk Cat enough."

"So, can you still use Feeve?"

"I don't know. Right now, I can't speak Musk Cat well enough. Their thoughts are too different to mine and most of their language is telepathic," she said, "When the Guardian was in my head, helping me use the technique, it kind of brought out the Musk Cat in me. I think the Old Man will be better at using the technique than I was."

"I really hope so," said Chaz.

"I can't believe we actually did a job and got paid for it!" she said, her face brightening, "How long has it been since that happened?"

"If we're lucky, the reception office will be closed by the time we get back, so we have a whole night of not having to report back!" he said.

"Do we really need to report the mission? It wasn't an official Guild mission, it was a personal request. We've been paid, so maybe we should just leave it..."

"We might get away with it, if nobody saw us handling the letter or heard us talking about the mission. The Guild gets suspicious of Hunters who don't report missions, though," he said, then suddenly looked panicked, "The coffee! I forgot all about it! I promised I'd have the answer by tonight, and I'm supposed to meet him in the bar before it closes!"

"Chaz, I seriously don't think anyone cares about the coffee..." commented Rika, "I also don't think we're anywhere near Aiedo."

"What? Where has Rune sent us this time?"

"Well, judging by that city over there being Zema..." said Rika. Chaz sighed.

"We might as well stop for the night," he said, "We're never going to get home at this rate."

It was at that point that they heard the noise, a little like a Hydrofoil exploding. Chaz turned his head. He saw the first of the wave of androids crossing the sea, heading towards Zema.

"I guess we won't be hurting for missions for a little while," he commented.


End file.
